Visitors from around the world made their way to Marshall County and the surrounding areas this weekend in anticipation of the first total solar eclipse to span coast-to-coast in the U.S. in 99 years. Officials say crowds didn’t quite reach numbers NASA advisers expected – analysts estimated up to 500,000 visitors to the region – though exact totals were unavailable.
Still, county and regional officials call the weekend a success in both tourism and emergency response.
Marshall County Emergency Management Director Curt Curtner said via Monday text message that crews saw no significant issues before or after the eclipse, and really, it was as smooth as responders could have possibly hoped.
“This was an ‘unknown,’ however, our citizens’ and tourists’ safety was our priority,” the agency issued in a statement on social media. “We will not be accused of being unprepared.”
Marshall County Sheriff Kevin Byars said crowds were about on par with a holiday weekend in the area, and while the increase in traffic was apparent, issues associated with an influx of visitors had proven minor.
“It wasn’t near as bad as all the experts were telling us it was going to be,” Byars said. “… Our traffic accidents did go back up because of course there was more traffic on the road and things such as that, but nothing just really out of the ordinary, nothing really big. I had enough people out that it didn’t seem like we were as busy as we were. We had 525 calls for the week, but it didn’t seem like that many. … We were prepared for whatever was going to happen. Because nobody knew what to expect.”
Byars said responses for the weekend and eclipse day were spread out, though the lakes area had seen more calls for service than the south and west areas of the county. The area near Kentucky Dam Village State Resort Park – and specifically the airport – were particularly busy, Byars said. The airport saw 91 planes fly in Monday for the eclipse.
“The reason why the came there was because all the other surrounding airports were charging $150-$200 a pop to land and watch the eclipse,” Byars said. “Whereas there, the park wasn’t charging anything. … That’s the most planes I’ve seen there in 40 years, when they used to have the old Swift airshow back in the ’70s. And it was nice to see that many folks show up.”
However, even with the additional bustle Byars said all had gone smoothly. It could have been a very different story. Though crowd sizes did not hit peak predictions, he was glad the department and area agencies had planned for much larger. Ultimately, Byars said better safe than sorry, and he attributed at least some of the quiet to increased presence and visibility of law enforcement.
“I thought it went off really good,” Byars said. “My guys, I was proud of what they did, because they were out there. They were very visible and I think that helped keep a lot of nonsense down.”
It was much the same story on Kentucky’s highways. Keith Todd, public information officer for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet districts 1 and 2, said officials had been a little concerned about the areas near construction efforts on Interstate 24 at Calvert City and the Purchase Parkway interchange at Mayfield. However, other than some congestion Saturday morning on I-24 at Exit 40, Todd said the lakes area proved relatively quiet.
“Over the weekend we had been telling people to treat it the way you would a major snow storm,” Todd said. “I think all the local people stocked up on food last Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then laid low over the weekend, because the traffic Sunday morning when I drove down to Hopkinsville was just eerie quiet. I mean, even I-24, it was like … there was just no traffic.”
Though traffic coming into eclipse weekend was fairly smooth, after was another story for areas east and near the West Kentucky Parkway. Todd said backlog began almost as soon as totality had concluded and didn’t clear up for more than five hours.
“We did have a little bit of a surge coming in, but not as big as we thought, but boy when it started going out …” Todd said. “I thought people would hang around until the actual end of the partial eclipse, but the minute the total eclipse was over, I mean, it was just like a parking lot out on the Pennyrile Parkway from everybody heading north. It was crazy how fast it hit after the total eclipse was over.”
It had little effect on visitors to Kentucky Dam Village. Park Manager Scot Ratzlaff said he was pleased with the preparation from local and state first response and emergency management agencies. No major incidents were reported in the park, nor on the water, he said.
“Everything came off very well,” Ratzlaff said. “Guests absolutely loved it. … We were totally booked.”
KDV, which sat in the longest point of totality in Marshall County, was running virtually at capacity as lodging had been completely booked. Guests came in from as far away as Ireland and Ontario, in addition to states across the U.S., Ratzlaff said, many of whom were unfamiliar with the region but expressed interest in returning in the future.
“We figured we had somewhere around 1,000 sleeping overnight at the campground, (and) we had every bit of that at the rest of the lodge and cottages,” Ratzlaff said. “… And then we had a lot of day-use people. A lot of folks just here for the day to watch it. … And they were all good people. There was a lot of folks that had never ever even considered coming down here before, and they fell in love with the area. It was a really good event. It was just a cool event period.”
KDV was among parks and local businesses to host activities this weekend, which included educational seminars on the event with Benne Holwerda, astronomy professor at the University of Louisville, and stargazing opportunities. The park partnered with the Calvert Area Development Association to host a bourbon tasting and music on the new lodge terrace, and also worked with Calvert City to host a showing of “ET: The Extraterrestrial” on the old beach. Some of those concepts he intended to use again in the future.
“We probably had 200 people down there watching the movie that evening,” Ratzlaff said. “It was very good for us, everybody had a good time. Everybody was pleasant, I didn’t have any major issues that happened at all. … We’d still like to play more with the old beach. I mean, the aspect of the free movie on the old beach, that was an awesome event. I may talk with John (Ward) over with the city about the possibility of doing more in the future with that. The CADA event we did on the terrace was really our first real event, and it went off smoothly. Very smoothly. To the point that I’ve actually got Cantageus coming back on Friday the (Sept.) 1st, playing down on the lawn.”
Those successes ultimately work in favor of county tourism numbers, though Kentucky Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Randy Newcomb said total estimates would be unavailable for several weeks. However, transient room tax revenue totals on the county’s 1,463 units for overnight accommodations would be available by late September, he said, which would give officials a good measure of how this year’s totals compare to 2016 for the month. About 99 percent of the county’s lodging accommodations were booked going into the weekend, he said.
Newcomb was confident the impact would be substantial, however. August typically sees a drop in tourism revenues due to students’ return to school, Newcomb said. The eclipse, followed closely thereafter by Hot August Blues at Kenlake State Resort Park, would undoubtedly bolster the financial outlook for the month.
Events surrounding the eclipse served as a healthy draw to the area, he said, despite fewer visitors than some had anticipated.
“Any added event you can have to go along with it is going to entice to people to visit your area,” Newcomb said. “In fact, I’d say the majority of people who went to the events are not from our area. What we’re kind of seeing is most people from Marshall County stayed in their home – stayed home or were at friends to watch the eclipse, where the events that were held throughout the county they were attended – and the viewing locations were attended – by people outside our area. So, it helped bring people in to have a nice unobstructed view of the eclipse.”
And there were others who shied away from those crowds. Newcomb said though he had visitors from New Zealand, Mexico and numerous states pass through the tourism office, predictions of inflated populations and traffic surrounding the event might ultimately have served to turn some potential visitors away.
“I had people in here (Monday) who were saying, ‘We do not want to go where there’s a heavy population of people,” Newcomb said. “Because I was trying to send them to the Dam area in Calvert or the city park area in Benton or Aurora wherever they had the vendors set up, and they said, ‘No. We want to go on a backroad out in the middle of nowhere and see it unobstructed with nobody around us.’ And I had several of those … and I think that’s it. I think they wanted to avoid the traffic, and they wanted to avoid the crowds.”
Todd said he thought perhaps lack of emphasis on the rarity of viewing a total eclipse as opposed to a partial might have contributed to smaller crowds, as well. Ultimately, it was a learning experience.
“I think the lesson to be learned here is that it’s absolutely, positively impossible to predict human behavior,” Todd said.