For generations, visitors to Maine have flocked east to the rocky coastline, with its lobster boats and crashing waves, or west to ski resorts, serene lakes and mountains. Few have ever set foot in Aroostook County, a remote northern stretch where residents are apt to suspect — not without reason — that no one south of Bangor even knows they exist.
So news that “the County,” as it’s known in Maine, would be in the path of totality for next month’s solar eclipse—making it a destination for potentially thousands of visitors—has mixed feelings in this proudly unassuming part. Accustomed to handing the spotlight over to flashy spots like Bar Harbor, some in the county aren’t sure how they feel about its fleeting status as a hot spot.
“It’s a little new for us here, so it’s stressful,” said Lindsay Anderson, manager of Brookside Bakery in Houlton, a town of 6,000 that borders Canada, where the plan for the eclipse weekend includes baking 500 pies, the official “state” of Maine. cure.”
Next door at Market Square Antiques and Pawn, a compact shop attended by several mounted deer heads, co-owner Tom Willard had his own concerns.
“Where are 20,000 people going to pee?” asked.
No one knows how many people will travel to Aroostook County for the April 8 eclipse, which will make planning a bit of a roulette wheel. Estimates range from 10,000 to 40,000, although attendance may be limited due to the long distance. Extending north beyond the end of Interstate 95 to the Canadian border — where the little-known, unfought Aroostook War raged from 1838 to 1839 — the county is about as large as Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. Caribou, near its northern tip, is 400 miles north of Boston, more than a six-hour drive.
For eclipse fanatics, though, it may not matter. Dan McGlaun, 60, who has seen 15 eclipses and runs a website dedicated to them next month, said he once traveled to French Polynesia and hiked “eight miles through banana plants in the middle of nowhere” to be – for 1.5 seconds — the only person on earth in the path of the eclipse, by his own estimation.
“Eclipse geeks, we’re very curious,” he admitted.
Northern Maine isn’t the only remote corner of the country expecting an influx. The path of totality also crosses places like the Ozarks, the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma and parts of South Texas, all hoping to benefit from the fleeting attention.
In Aroostook County, where potato farms abound and practicality is paramount, stories like Mr. McGlaun’s only add to the general wariness. It doesn’t help that the eclipse will take place during Northern New England’s infamous slush season, when thawing ground turns into tire-sucking slush, raising concerns that unsuspecting drivers “from afar” will get stuck in rural roads and should be pulled out. .
Also not helping: memories of the last big influx, in August 1997, when an outdoor concert festival by the band Phish drew 65,000 fans to a former air base in Limestone, a town of 1,500. Locals who had scoffed at the attendance projections were caught off guard when the crowd materialized, causing traffic gridlock and grocery store shelves to empty. (“Like grasshoppers,” recalled one county resident.)
Dependent on decades of population leakage, some again questioned crowd projections when talk of the eclipse began two years ago. That’s when Houlton’s eclipse committee sprang into action, convincing the city that it needed to start planning — and capitalizing on the fact that it would be the last American city in the path.
“The biggest challenge was that people didn’t take it seriously — saying, ‘What’s the big deal, it’s three minutes of darkness, who’s going to come here for that?’ said Johanna Johnston, the city’s lead eclipse event organizer. “We needed to explain that it’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced and it’s an opportunity to show what we can do and what we have to offer.”
Many businesses jumped at the chance. Ivey’s Motor Lodge in Houlton has received its first reservation for the 2022 eclipse, its manager said. When the hotel realized what was happening, it tripled its rates for the nights surrounding the eclipse and tightened its cancellation policy. Most hotels in the area are fully booked for the event, but Ivey’s still had vacancies earlier this month, possibly because it was charging $650 per night.
Mindful that their 15 minutes of fame will only last for three minutes and 18 seconds (totality, when the moon will completely block the sun, begins at 3:32 p.m. in Houlton), the eclipse committee has planned four days of festivities meant to entice travelers to arrive well in advance of the main event — and maybe even return for another visit.
The city will have six designated “star parks” to view the eclipses and a crew of welcoming “eclipse ambassadors” who will offer guidance. To help the crowds in case the restaurants are overwhelmed, many churches plan to offer traditional Maine baked beans and charcuterie dinners.
Jane Torres, executive director of the Houlton Chamber of Commerce, has hired a performance art troupe from Rhode Island for the occasion, helped couples who wanted to get married in town during the eclipse, helped organize a NASA broadcast on a historic downtown movie theater that will show the eclipse as it moves across the country and enlisted the yoga teacher to fill a “metaphysical stage” with tarot card readers and healing demonstrations.
He has also rented 100 portable toilets, a number he acknowledged was a hopeful shot in the dark.
“The challenge is the unknown,” Ms. Torres said.
The looming unknown is the weather in northern Maine in early April. Among the 15 states in the path of totality, Maine has some of the lowest chance of clear skies — and the best chance of snow — a factor that can drive eclipse enthusiasts, known as umbraphiles, to locations where cloud cover is less likely. (Ironically, perhaps, Aroostook’s name comes from a native Mi’kmaq word meaning “clean.”)
According to Priscilla Buster, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Caribou, the chance of cloud cover at the time of the eclipse is between 60 and 70 percent.
“It doesn’t look good to us up here,” he said.
The threat of clouds prompted Linda Mitchell to cancel her hotel reservation in western Maine – Franklin County, part of which will see totality – and book plane tickets to Texas.
“It could be awesome in Maine, but I just don’t trust the weather,” he said. “I’m not really a list person, but that’s not going to happen again in my life.”
Still, Houlton’s eclipse committee is keeping its chin up. His hopes were boosted recently by a paper describing an “eclipse cooling effect” observed by scientists that causes clouds to break up when the sun goes down and temperatures drop.
Kevin McCartney, retired geology professor at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, will focus on another sun on the day of the eclipse. That morning, he plans to unveil a new 40-foot-tall 3D model of the sun at the campus entrance. It will serve as the new northern terminus of the Maine Solar System Model, a sprawling roadside attraction installed 20 years ago along 100 miles of rural U.S. Route 1 in Aroostook County, with spaced-out “planets” depending on their actual distances to each other. in space.
“Ready to travel the solar system from the comfort of your car?” its website asks.
The largest such model in the western hemisphere, and a top tourist attraction in the county, it attracts families and, “believe it or not, solar system model enthusiasts”, Mr McCartney said. The new sun, visible from Route 1, will be easier to find than the old, two-dimensional one painted on the walls inside the university’s science museum — and it will shine even when the county’s sky is overcast.
“People are always walking around campus asking, ‘Where’s the sun?'” he said. “Now they won’t be able to miss it.”
