Katherine Lee Bates

Located on the west side of the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, the bronze sculpture of Katherine Lee Bates depicts her sitting on a rock facing Pikes Peak, at the top of which she hastily penned notes in 1893 that would become the national hymn “America the Beautiful.” She taught briefly at Colorado College but is best known for her long career teaching at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, as well as for seven published volumes of poetry. The only payment she ever received for “America the Beautiful” was a small check from a weekly journal called The Congregationalist, which published the poem on July 4, 1895. John Lajba of Nebraska is the artist.