I don't know where you were but my experience is different. I grew up in Southern California equidistant from LA and Edwards AFB. In the 60's and 70's I definitely heard sonic booms. No one was taking off near us so they weren't damaging to property or people, as people expected the SST might be.

Interesting. Would call where you grew sparely populated?

How about extremely sparsely populated.

>I don't know where you were

Massachusetts, South Florida, other places east of the Mississippi.

The area is now called Santa Clarita, California. The area was then a clump of bedroom communities that may have totaled about 50 thousand people. Some farmland was still cultivated then (the aroma of the onion harvest is a childhood memory), sheep were even grazed. But there were tracts of houses and the tracts were already closely spaced enough to support three significant high schools. Even from a jet you should have known you were flying over a populated area by looking out the window.

Thanks. Roughly how many sonic booms did you hear during your time there?

My personal recollection is, there were two or more a year. There may have been less in the seventies. In any case more frequent than the minor earthquakes one endures everywhere in California. I was there from age 3 to age 18.

Back in the 1960s, the USAF did practice runs around some US cities, including Cleveland. One night there was quite a sonic boom, which I remember chiefly because my grandmother nearly jumped out of her chair. I think that we may have heard others in those days too. I believe that was a B-58 that produced the sound I remember.