A mountaintop performance this August drew fresh attention to one of Colorado Springs' most celebrated contributions to American culture — the poem that grew into what many consider the country's unofficial second national anthem.
The song traces its origins to the summer of 1893, when Katharine Lee Bates, then a visiting professor at Colorado College, composed the poem after a trip to the Pikes Peak summit left her searching for words to capture what she saw. Bates brought the poem to print on July 4, 1895, publishing it in The Congregationalist, and roughly a decade later Samuel Ward set it to music, drawing on the melody from his existing hymn, Materna.
On Colorado Day, August 1, local singer Laura Rupejko joined Gazette columnist Vince Bzdek and videographer Tom Hellauer for a trip to the top of Pikes Peak, with the aim of recording a performance of the song at the precise location that gave birth to it — a tribute to the state's 150th anniversary. The crew hauled amplifiers, microphones, a guitar, extension cords, and recording gear aboard the Cog Railway early that morning for the ascent. Questions lingered about what it would demand of a singer to perform at the 14,115-foot elevation, contending with thin air and open-summit winds.
"America the Beautiful" has long held a place in Rupejko's regular set, dating to her time as the resident musician at the Garden of the Gods Resort. Rupejko described opening her first Fourth of July performance there by singing "America" alone, without accompaniment — "A cappella," she explained, from the resort's patio where both Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak are visible. Bzdek noted that Rupejko, who was born on the Fourth of July, brought a particular personal connection to the material.
The performance also offered a chance to revisit the layered geography behind Bates's lyrics. Bates reportedly said she could make out the vast grasslands and wheat fields of Kansas from the Pikes Peak summit, and that sweeping view fed directly into her imagery of amber waves and fruited plains. The phrase "alabaster cities gleam" drew from a separate stop Bates made that same summer at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where classical architectural styles shaped the exhibition buildings, their facades coated in a white compound of plaster and hemp fiber that shimmered under the fair's all-electric lighting — the first World's Fair to run entirely on electricity.
After Rupejko completed her first full run-through on the summit, other visitors nearby began singing their own unplanned versions of the song. The moment echoed a broader pattern: "America the Beautiful" has repeatedly surfaced at major national occasions, including Ray Charles's rendition at the 2001 World Series in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and Brandi Carlile's two performances this year — one at Super Bowl LX and one at the Statue of Liberty's 250th anniversary celebration.
Some have long argued that the Colorado-born song deserves to replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the official national anthem, citing the current anthem's demanding vocal range, its uneven meter, and widespread public preference for a melody that more people find singable and accessible. Those efforts have never advanced meaningfully through Congress.
Video of the summit performance had not been publicly released at the time of reporting, and no release date has been announced.