The general solar maximum occurred during sunspot cycles in the 50s and it tentatively appears we are in a decline since the early 00s. Anyone lucky enough to have family with anecdotal evidence of auroras over the past 70-80 years?
My father claims to have witnessed aurora in Alabama as a kid, I'm guessing sometime in the 1950s. I was thinking this wasn't all that rural of an area either, although light pollution was arguably less than today. I myself saw it in North-central Ohio in 1999.
I saw them at least 3 times in the early 1980s in Wisconsin, but never since. I had an uncle who was very much into stargazing, so we'd often go out in the middle of the night to see meteor showers or the northern lights.