20th Century Solar Eclipses in the United States

The path of the eclipse on June 8, 1918, started south of Japan, went across the Pacific Ocean, and then across the United States. The largest city to see totality was Denver. The U.S. Naval Observatory obtained a special grant from Congress to send a team to Baker City, Oregon to observe the event. Howard Russell Bulter, an artist and physicist, painted a picture of the eclipse after only watching it for 112 seconds. The 1918 solar eclipse was the last time totality crossed the continental United States, from the Pacific to Atlantic.

The total solar eclipse of January 24, 1925, was seen by perhaps millions of people in the Northeast United States, including the New York metropolitan area. People went out into the streets, on top of buildings to catch sight of the event. In addition to the regular spectators, researchers, and observers from around the U.S came to New York to study the eclipse.  Data, photographs, and records were collected from airplanes and dirigibles dispatched for a better view.

The eclipse on March 7, 1970, has also been called the "eclipse of the century." It was visible across North and South America, and totality was seen across southern Mexico, the southeast coast of the United States and Canada. NASA's Wallops Flight Facility (in Virginia) was in the path of totality. Researchers used the opportunity to launch suborbital rockets to conduct experiments and study meteorology, solar physics, and other scientific topics during the event.

On February 26, 1979, eclipse viewers in the Pacific Northwest caught sight of a total solar eclipse. Totality was experienced in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and North Dakota. Many people traveled to view this eclipse since it would be the last total eclipse observed in the continental United States until 2017. Unfortunately, cloudy skies obscured viewing of the eclipse in certain parts of the region.