Falmouth-born poet and author Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929) penned our nation’s unofficial national anthem, “America the Beautiful,” while riding the rails from Massachusetts to Colorado in the summer of 1893. A graduate and early developer of Wellesley College, Bates became a professor and eventually head of the college’s English Literature Department, which she helped establish as a field of university study (by writing the subject’s very first textbook). Thank you from American Lit students everywhere! This remarkable woman also authored travel books, children’s books, essays, and published a multitude of poetry. Still she found time to mentor rising poets like Robert Frost.