An Eclipseville mural in Hopkinsville, Ky. Like Bloomington in 2024, all eyes were on Hopkinsville during the 2017 total solar eclipse. (Cali Lichter/WTIU)
Some call it Hopkinsville, others call it Hoptown. But in 2017, the southern Kentucky town got another nickname: Eclipseville.
Hopkinsville, Ky., was deemed “the point of greatest eclipse” by NASA in the 2017 total solar eclipse, drawing over 120,000 visitors to a town of around 30,000. Even though the town is not in the direct path of this year’s total eclipse, Eclipseville is still proud of its legacy seven years later.
Graham said that Bloomington will have the challenge of having state resources spread out to other areas. (Devan Ridgway, WTIU News)
Randy Graham has been the Christian County Emergency Management Director since 2010. He and his team started to prepare a month before the 2017 eclipse for all contingencies.
“That's what we do in emergency management,” Graham said. “You plan for the worst and hope for the best.”
Christian County is 725 square miles, which is nearly 1.75 times the size of Monroe County. On the day of the eclipse, they had about 25 separate events throughout the area. With that many people spread out over a large area, one of Graham’s biggest concerns was traffic.
“How are you going to get the people in? And, then, how are you going to get them out afterwards?” Graham said. “So, we had tremendous traffic plans coming in, and then tremendous plans for those folks to exit out of the county.”
Read more: Bloomington, IU leaders share safety plans for 300,000 eclipse visitors
One of the benefits of the 2017 eclipse was that, unlike the 2024 eclipse which will go across much of the state of Indiana, Kentucky only had a few counties in the eclipse’s path.
“We had the benefit of having the National Guard, Kentucky State Police, Department of Public Health, the State Department of Public Health,” Graham said. “We had all those resources that were focused on Christian County, where Indiana for the 2024, since it encompasses the entire state, for the most part, those resources are going to be spread out and not focused on a single county.”
During the eclipse, at the emergency operations center, Graham said the room stood still when the world went dark.
“The phones went quiet, and that never happens with our dispatch center,” he said.
That allowed the dispatchers to go out onto the roof and enjoy the event.
“You could hear as the eclipse started coming west to east to where we were, you could hear a lot of the different areas that we had viewing sights,” Graham said. “Just applause and people screaming, and it was just getting closer and closer to us.”
Even though Bloomington and Hopkinsville differ in size, Hendricks said that crowds will be a similar issue. (Devan Ridgway, WTIU News)
Carter Hendricks said on his first day as mayor of Hopkinsville on Jan. 1, 2015, he circled the 2017 eclipse date on his calendar.
“It was one of the first events that was front and center on my thought process and as a priority, because I knew it'd be such a wonderful event, and people from all over the world would come,” Hendricks said.
Even though the eclipse was mapped long before 2017, Hendricks would ask himself if people really travel all over the globe to places like Hopkinsville to experience the eclipse. After the event, he understands why people chase the phenomenon.
“But I don't think this can disappoint,” Hendricks said. “I did not prepare myself for the emotional experience I would have in the middle of that two minutes and 41 seconds, where you just appropriately realize how insignificant you really are.”
Read more: Can you chase the path of totality?
Hendricks said the town knew it would have a lot of visitors, but not how many. Just like Bloomington, where officials estimate 300,000 will come on eclipse day, there was more to do than just day-of eclipse prep.
“We wanted them to have a wonderful experience and try to measure up to what we knew the eclipse itself would be, and that people would leave it going you know that ‘not only did I enjoy the actual physical experience of the eclipse, but I enjoyed the hospitality that that community provided,’” Hendricks said.
Hopkinsville wasn’t used to more than 120,000 visitors being in town on a single day. And even though Bloomington is no stranger to having large crowds for concerts or sporting events, Hendricks said it will be an event unlike any other.
“This will be a larger number probably than any, no disrespect to the Hoosier basketball nation or football nation, I don't believe they're thinking 500,000 are coming to home game,” Hendricks said.
And for a town like Hopkinsville that doesn’t have events quite like Bloomington, having people from places like The Weather Channel in town was something special.
“It's really cool when The Weather Channel’s in your community, and it's not because of a natural disaster,” Hendricks said.
Seven years later, Hendricks, who is now the Executive Director of the Southwestern Kentucky Economic Development Council, said the effects of Aug. 21, 2017, will never truly leave the town.
“We're still Eclipseville,” Hendricks said. “Whatever anybody says in 2024, we still own that name. No, I'm kidding, of course. But we did it officially rebrand ourselves as Eclipseville and just really ran with it.”
Leavell (right) shows artifacts left over from the 2017 eclipse at the Hopkinsville-Christian County Convention and Visitors Bureau. (Devan Ridgway, WTIU News)
Debbie Leavell is now with the Hopkinsville-Christian County Convention and Visitors Bureau, but during the eclipse she was the Former Coordinator of the Women’s Community Service Work Program at the Christian County Jail. She, along with a group of women from the jail, helped then-eclipse coordinator Brooke Young with activities on eclipse day.
“And luckily, she called me one day and she said, ‘Could you please help me the day of, because I know you've done a lot of other things to do prepare Hopkinsville for the eclipse,’ which we had been doing a lot of stuff,” Leavell said. “And I was just thrilled that she asked me.”
Read more: Visit Bloomington, Parks Department explain plans for eclipse celebrations
She said that the town of Hopkinsville not only focused on the sky for the event, but also on the ground in their community.
“I know we did a lot of extra things to really spruce up Hopkinsville. I know that where I worked, we put down a lot of mulch,” Leavell said. “Really spruced up a lot of really good things and just trying to make Hopkinsville even more pretty than what it is.”
During the event, Leavell said that she wasn’t prepared for the atmosphere.
“I don't think we really realize it's going to be dark,” Leavell said. “You're going to hear sounds that you hear at night. See, I just couldn't grasp all that.”
AJ (right) shows the map used to plan for the eclipse crowd on the distillery property. (Devan Ridgway, WTIU News)
AJ Jones and the crew at Casey Jones Distillery entertained 6,000 people at the time of the eclipse and over 12,000 in the two week period leading up to it. AJ said that everybody was respectful and no one ill-mannered, which was because of who comes to these types of events.
“It's people that are eclipse chasers,” AJ said. “Once you've seen one, you really want to see another one and another one and another one. And that's what kind of happens.”
But the distillery didn’t just host 850 campers; it drew of sales. For the 2017 eclipse, the distillery, which is known for their moonshine, trademarked Total Eclipse Moonshine. Even though Hopkinsville is not in the path of totality this time around, Casey Jones will have Total Eclipse Moonshine as well as Total Eclipse Burbon.
The property at Casey Jones was close to the point of totality, and they knew well in advance there would be a lot of visitors to their location.
“The thing we started doing was we started planning about two years before the eclipse, because we knew it was going to happen. We knew our location, and the studies that we did on it,” AJ said. “We knew people were gonna flock to this area. And, so, we tried to be prepared for we tried to cover all the bases.”
Although the property did get busier than AJ expected, with Greyhound busloads of people getting dropped off at the property the morning of the eclipse, there was enough community to go around.
“It was busy. It was a lot of fun,” AJ said. “It was, as far as the experience of the eclipse itself, is pretty spectacular.”
Despite the amount of people, the team still had time to enjoy the eclipse themselves, going down to the lake in the back of the property and drinking Moon-a-ritas during the event.
If there’s one thing AJ learned from that day, it is to expect the unexpected and to have good security measures in place.
“People when they feel safe, they're going to have a lot better experience,” AJ said.
