The view from Pikes Peak is breathtaking. In the summer of 1893, Katherine Lee Bates sat on the summit of Pikes Peak, inspired by the panorama to pen the words to "America the Beautiful." Her poem was set to the tune "Materna" by Samuel Augustus Ward two years later to become one of our nation's most beloved anthems. Many educated Americans in the first half of the eighteenth century held an opinion that differed greatly from Bates's description of America's plains, considering the vast steppe between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains a Great American Desert that posed a barrier to westward expansion. The Stephen Long Expedition of 1820 did more to promulgate this idea than any other source. Thomas Say, the mission's zoologist, reported that the group dreaded the journey across "the trackless desert." Dr. Edwin James, the official chronicler of the expedition, stated that the explorers passed through "a barren and desolate region."