Simi Valley, Calif. ? The pilgrims just kept coming.

By night’s end Tuesday, more than 105,000 had trooped solemnly by Ronald Reagan’s flag-draped coffin at his presidential library near Simi Valley. Most were ferried by bus from nearby Moorpark College, where they waited in line for as long as seven hours.

While plans for the viewing were years in the making, nobody anticipated a crush of visitors so overwhelming that even before dawn on Tuesday, traffic was halted for hours on the Ronald Reagan Freeway.

At the Reagan home in Bel-Air, Nancy Reagan said she was stunned by the turnout, said Joanne Drake, chief of staff at Reagan’s office.

“It is unbelievable what I am seeing on TV,” Drake quoted the former first lady as saying. “The outpouring of love for my husband is incredible.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, paid his respects with a moment of silence beside the coffin. He made the sign of the cross and bowed his head.

Kerry was in Los Angeles for his daughter’s graduation from the American Film Institute. Both he and President Bush will attend the late president’s funeral Friday at the National Cathedral in Washington.

While Kerry’s entourage glided up the hill in a motorcade, a seemingly endless caravan of buses hauled parents with their young children, elderly people with canes and wheelchairs, old soldiers bidding farewell to their former commander in chief and legions of people who fondly recalled the 40th president.

“I feel blessed to be here,” said Shirley Venus Wake, a 51-year-old Pasadena secretary. “I became a Republican because of him. Everything was just great then.”

Thousands line up in the Moorpark College parking lot before getting on a bus to be taken to pay their respects to former President Ronald Reagan at his presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif. When the viewing ended at 10 p.m. Tuesday, more than 105,000 people had gone through the library.

Even critics of Reagan’s administration were moved by what they saw at his library.

“I spent a decade blaming him for things because I’m a union person,” said Jeanne Edwards, a Thousand Oaks mother who was persuaded to visit by her 18-year-old daughter, Kira. “I knew at the time I didn’t like his policies, but you couldn’t not like him as a person.”

The tide of well-wishers swelled Monday night and Tuesday morning. From the hilltop library, visitors gazing across the valley could see a chain of red lights as motorists inched along. Before dawn on Tuesday, a few frustrated drivers left their cars on the freeway shoulder and trudged miles to Moorpark College, where they would wait some more.

At the library turnoff on Olsen Road, police officers staffed a checkpoint beside a makeshift shrine. An electric highway sign read: “Road closed. Flower drop only.”

The period in which Reagan’s body was to lie in repose at the library was originally supposed to end at 6 p.m. Tuesday, but the overwhelming turnout forced an extension to 10 p.m. More buses were added to the shuttle fleet to handle the crowds.