David Rittenhouse (Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square named for him) among others, observed the 1769 transit, calculated distance from earth to sun @ 93 million miles, which has proven to be more accurate than any other calculation of the time. The platform built behind the State House in Philadelphia to observe the transit (not used by Rittenhouse ) was still standing in 1776 and was the stage from which the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence occurred.
Thanks. The book “Transit of Venus” recounts that a similar observation site was selected in Africa, and artifacts from those observers are still there (or were, at the time the book was researched).