45 Years Ago Today, A Total Solar Eclipse Struck A Stonehenge—And It Happens Again In The U.S. In 42 Days

26.02.2024 - 14:21 / forbes.com / Art

In 42 days, a total solar eclipse will visit North America, throwing parts of Mexico, 15 U.S. states, and Canada into darkness for a few minutes during the day.

At 13:31 CDT, a totality of 4 minutes 25 seconds will come to Stonehenge II, a concrete art project in Ingram in the Texas Hill Country, a replica of the 5,000 years old monument in Salisbury Plains, England (though possibly from Wales).

It won’t be the first time. North America is living through a golden age of total solar eclipses, with April 8’s event taking place less than seven years after the so-called “Great American Eclipse” that went coast to coast from Oregon to South Carolina on August 21, 2017.

However, at a previous total solar eclipse in the U.S. another Stonehenge replica was shrouded in darkness.

On February 26, 1979, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, a total solar eclipse came to the Pacific Northwest and central Canada. A total solar eclipse can only be viewed from within a narrow path of totality, which that day was 166 to 185 miles wide as it crossed the continent.

That day, totality struck just after sunrise, as seen from parts of northern Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and North Dakota, as well as Manitoba and remote parts of Ontario and Quebec in Canada, and Greenland.

It threw a Stonehenge replica above the Columbia River in Maryhill, Washington, into darkness for 2 minutes 14 seconds. Visitors “dropped down to the nearby replica of Stonehenge to converse with the disciples of neo-pagan religions who were led there, they said, by a vision,” wrote Don Duncan in the Seattle Times. They “danced, chanted and offered up sacrifices of fruits, deer meat and seeds on the Stonehenge altar,” according to Duncan. This eclipse was also the inspirstion for Annie Dillard's beautiful essay “Total Eclipse.”

The weather was challenging but cleared up for those at “Stonehenge” and also for those in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada—the closest community to the point of greatest eclipse—so observers could experience a totality lasting 2 minutes and 46 seconds.

Many scientists and experienced eclipse-chasers from the U.S. had traveled to Brandon, including staff from Chicago’s Adler Planetarium and the late, great Jay Pasachoff, who went on to witness 74 solar eclipses. It was the town’s last total solar eclipse until the year 2339.

Nearby Winnipeg also got a clear view, although the entire region was predicted to be cloudy. However, there were the usual misunderstandings over eye safety that repeat at every solar eclipse. “Many schools, heeding the warnings of eye doctors, kept students in their classrooms to watch the show on television,” said one news reporter, who went on to interview people in Winnipeg literally as they watched