In 1893, at the age of thirty-three, Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, took a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a summer school session at Colorado College. Several of the sights on her trip inspired her to write a poem, first published in the Fourth of July edition of the church periodical The Congregationalist in 1895.
A decade earlier, in 1882, church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward was on a ferryboat trip from Coney Island back to his home in New York City after a leisurely summer day. A tune came to him, and he immediately wrote it down. In fact, He was so anxious to capture the tune in his head, he asked a friend and fellow passenger for his shirt cuff to write on!
Ward's music combined with Bates's poem was first published together in 1910 and titled, "America the Beautiful."
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