Pikes peak

"O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. For purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plain." — "America the Beautiful"

COLORADO SPRINGS — You'll probably never think of "America the Beautiful" the same way after you visit Pikes Peak. The vista is so spectacular that it inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write the words to the patriotic song after she visited the summit in 1893.

Pikes Peak is the 30th tallest mountain in Colorado, according to the Colorado 14ers (www.14ers.com). Notwithstanding, its 14,110-foot summit is visited by more people annually than any other peak in America, and it ranks as the second-most visited mountain in the world.

It's not as much the height as it is the beauty that attracts more than half-a-million spectators every year. (Only Japan's Mount Fuji has more visitors each year, says www.pikes-peak.com, a Web site maintained by the city of Colorado Springs.)

Pikes Peak is the eastern-most of Colorado's big peaks, and it was mistakenly believed to be the state's highest point by early settlers. And why not? Many days you can see for hundreds of miles, all the way to Kansas and New Mexico.

(Unlike Utah, where mountains ultimately block your long-range view in all directions, the eastern third of Colorado is a high-elevation plain — with no mountains.)

Indeed, in the 1850s, the peak was a symbol to the gold seekers heading west when "Pikes Peak or Bust" became their slogan.

Bates, a professor of English at Wellesley College, was in Colorado Springs to teach a summer session at Colorado College in July of 1893.

On July 22, she along with several other members of the visiting faculty took a trip in a carriage to Pikes Peak. Horses got them to the halfway point, and a team of mules finished the climb to the summit. The group stayed there only half an hour, but Bates wrote the following words: "An erect, decorous group, we stood at last on that Gate-of-Heaven summit . . . and gazed in wordless rapture over the far expanse of mountain ranges and sea-like sweep of plain."

Then, her song writing started, and she penned the entire "America the Beautiful" on her return that evening to Colorado Springs.

Located 70 miles south of Denver and west of Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs, Pikes Peak is a must for any Colorado visitor.