“America the Beautiful” is one of the most universally known, beloved tunes in the United States. It was written, originally as a poem, by a Wellesley College professor named Katharine Lee Bates in 1893.



The Falmouth native taught at both Natick High School and the Dana Hall School before joining the faculty at Wellesley. In the summer of 1893, Bates travelled to the West Coast to give a guest lecture at Colorado College. “This young girl, standing on Pike’s Peak in Colorado, looked out across the country and saw a vision,” The Boston Globe wrote in 1929."