Cities in path of last solar eclipse share what to expect when the sky darkens over Erie
A small city in Kentucky dubbed itself "Eclipseville" in 2017.
Hopkinsville, Kentucky, population 30,374, attracted an estimated 100,000-plus visitors from 46 states and 20 countries who came for one of the best views of the last total eclipse of the sun visible across the U.S., on Aug. 21, 2017.
Some of the best views of the next total solar eclipse will be in Erie on April 8. And as the region prepares for the thousands of visitors expected, officials are reaching out to communities that have been there and done that.
"Other cities have been gracious and very forthcoming in sharing their experiences," said Emily Biddle, director of marketing and research for VisitErie. As Erie County's tourism promotion agency, VisitErie is leading local planning for the April 8 eclipse.
People will come
The first thing for Erie to know is that people will come, said Debi West, who reported on the 2017 eclipse in Cerulean, Kentucky, near Hopkinsville in western Kentucky, for the Bowling Green Daily News.
Now public information officer for the city of Bowling Green, Kentucky, West was among the thousands who watched the eclipse from a farmer's fields.
"It looked like the pictures from Woodstock, just jam-packed with people," West recalls. "People brought their entire families with them.
"A lot of them had camped overnight. There were tents and coolers and chairs for sitting out all day."
In rural southern Illinois, where the duration of the 2017 eclipse was the longest, an estimated 50,000 visitors descended on the region, nearly matching the combined population of its three largest cities. The region will be in the path of the total eclipse again in 2024.
In Carbondale, Illinois, a capacity crowd of 15,000 watched the 2017 eclipse from the Southern Illinois University football stadium. Others watched from open areas in the nearby Shawnee National Forest or from wherever they could, said Steven Mitchell, development director for the city.
"People found someplace out in the country or just pulled off on the side of the road," Mitchell said. "People were all over the place."
Hotel bookings didn't tell the whole story of how many people came. Some camped out, others came in day trips from hours away, and some came the night before with no lodging, Mitchell said.
"There were people who slept in bushes or wherever they could find. It was crazy," he said.
The city of Carbondale opened its civic center as a comfort station for visitors.
"It has public restrooms and all that so people could at least use the facilities, get cleaned up and cool off," Mitchell said.
And they won't trickle in
Carbondale had expected visitors to begin arriving a few days before the eclipse, which was on a Monday in 2017, as it will be in 2024.
They didn't.
The city staged free concerts and other events to entertain guests in the days leading up to the eclipse, but they were only sparsely attended. Locals had hunkered down for fear of the crowds and visitors simply hadn't come yet, Mitchell said.
"That was one of the lessons we learned," Mitchell said. "People didn't start to arrive until Sunday. It was busy in town that evening, and by Monday morning it was crazy. Every restaurant that sold breakfast had lines out the door."
The city also arranged for shuttles to and from a mall parking lot, grassy areas and other overflow parking sites.
"They turned out not to be used. People found their own ways around," Mitchell said.
Traffic will be heaviest after the eclipse
Traffic wasn't congested until after the 2017 eclipse, when it was paralyzed, Mitchell said.
"As soon as the eclipse was over, everybody packed up and left at one time. It was like after a big concert is over and you're just sitting there waiting to get moving, but on a much broader scale," he said.
To get to his home about 35 miles away, Mitchell after the eclipse drove on back roads that he thought would be lightly traveled. Instead, they were packed.
"It didn't matter that I was local and knew all the 'secret' routes," he said. "Everyone has Google maps on their phone and a lot of them found the same routes I thought I had a lock on."
Traffic on secondary roads was worse.
"Traffic on every rural highway I crossed was stopped or slowly, slowly moving," Mitchell said.
Police officers directed traffic at city intersections.
In the Hopkinsville, Kentucky, area, Debi West remembers the logjam of vehicles as thousands of people left. Visitors waited for hours to get on the road and through the nearby towns.
"The police departments in the area had set up a kind of barricades to keep traffic on a certain path so that hundreds of cars weren't pouring into neighborhoods," West said. "It was a very long day for people heading home."
Few demands on public services in 2017
Visitors who came to see the last total eclipse were excited but not unruly, host city residents said.
"People were friendly, very excited and very happy to be here, and very polite," Carbondale's Mitchell said. "Trash wasn't an issues and calls for service from the police department were almost non-existent. There were no thefts, no assaults, no violence of any kind.
"It was really kind of amazing. They were a pretty well-behaved bunch."
In was the same in rural Kentucky, West said.
"I wouldn't say that it was a party atmosphere, but rather a celebratory atmosphere. Everybody knew that they were witnessing something spectacular," she said.
Erie planning for 2024
Anywhere from 65,000 to 260,000 visitors are expected to come to Erie to see the eclipse.
Erie's Eclipse 2024 committee is looking at how to accommodate them, at marketing "The Ultimate Sunblock" event, at distributing eclipse safety glasses, and more.
Public safety, including crowd control and traffic management, is a major focus of the planning by a subcommittee of police, fire, public works, transportation and government officials.
"They're working to make sure we're prepared from the safety standpoint, looking at things like traffic, making sure congestion is addressed and keeping people safe," Biddle said.
Presque Isle State Park and the Erie bayfront are likely to attract the largest crowds, and the most traffic headaches.
"It's hard right now to say where all of those visitors will go, but our guess internally is the same place where people gravitate for any major spectacle — the water," Biddle said.
Eclipse 2024 is planning viewing events at other locations to take at least some of the pressure off the waterfront.
"We'll be trying to distribute people throughout the county," Biddle said.
Traffic on Erie's Bayfront Parkway could be affected not only by crowds but by construction. Parkway improvements planned by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation could be underway by early spring.
"We don't know yet where we'll be at on bayfront construction, but it will definitely be something we look at," said Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokeswoman Jill Harry. "The eclipse is on our radar. We'll also be looking at things like safe places for people to pull off the highways to view."
Erie planning for the eclipse will ramp up this fall, once the summer tourism season ends. But work is ongoing, including talks with counterparts in Carbondale, Illinois, in other cities where crowds flocked in 2017, and in cities expecting crowds in 2024 — through virtual meetings hosted by the American Astronomical Society and at in-person events including a session in Rochester, New York, last fall.
The help from cities with 2017 experience is especially appreciated, Biddle said.
That same guidance was lacking six years ago, Carbondale's Mitchell said.
"When we were planning for 2017, we were building the airplane as we flew it," he said. "Nobody in living memory had done anything like that before since the last total eclipse to cross the U.S. was almost 100 years before, in 1918."
Contact Valerie Myers at vmyers@timesnews.com.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: The sun will be eclipsed on April 8 in Erie. Here's what to expect.
