An estimated 10,000 people gathered in Jefferson Barracks Park, on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, well inside the totality zone. Shortly before the total eclipse, locusts began chirping in the trees, only to be drowned out by roars from the crowd.

Terry McGarrigle of White Plains, N.Y., traveled to St. Louis to experience totality firsthand. “You can read about it, but I am a witness to something powerful in the universe,” she said.

In downtown St. Louis, people jammed rooftops to witness a near-total eclipse. The sudden dusk caused street and bridge lights to turn on.

Here in Charleston, the final city on the eclipse route, the clouds wreaked havoc with totality. But with classes starting Tuesday, hundreds of College of Charleston students gathered for a campus viewing of the eclipse celebrated anyway.

They hooted and hollered as the moon slowly worked its way across the sun — a sight that, with glasses, was visible through the clouds. And they screamed again after totality, when a crescent sun again made an appearance.

Then the eclipse headed past Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, across slivers of coastal wetlands and out over the Atlantic Ocean, where it ended for good at sunset near Africa.

The nation won’t have to wait decades for the next one — a total eclipse will sweep from Texas to Maine on April 8, 2024.