**UPDATE, as of Monday, July 26, 2010, now this is a
Single-Stop
Cache. It started out
Purple
but now you can bypass the Purple stop and go straight to the
Majestic View of Pikes Peak.**
O beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For Purple Mountain Majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.
O beautiful, for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw;
Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law!
O beautiful, for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
'Til all success be nobleness, and ev'ry gain divine!
O beautiful, for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years,
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!
The words are by
Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor
at Wellesley College. In 1893, Bates had taken a train trip to
Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session
at Colorado College, and several of the sights on her trip found
their way into her poem:
The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the "White City" with
its promise of the future contained within its alabaster
buildings.
The wheat fields of Kansas, through which her train was riding on
July 4.
The majestic view of the Great Plains from atop Pikes
Peak.
On top of
Pikes Peak, the words of the poem started to come
to her, and she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at
the original Antlers Hotel. The poem was initially published two
years later in The Congregationalist, to commemorate the Fourth of
July. It quickly caught the public's fancy. Amended versions were
published in 1904 and 1913.
Note: some sources omit the second verse, and substitute its
refrain for that of the fourth verse.
Congrats to F3, for being the FTF, on
7/6/08!!!
Additional Waypoints
PU1DPY0 - Final for Purple Mountain Majasties
N 38° 49.013 W 104° 57.848
This is the final. It is a small plastic container, placed under some rocks with a perfect view of Pikes Peak.
Purple Mountain Majesties
| Difficulty: 
| Terrain: 
5