Fifth-grade students at Pleasant Crossing Elementary School in Whiteland watch the partial eclipse outside of their school in 2017.
DAILY JOURNAL FILE PHOTO
In just under a year, darkness will descend on Johnson County in broad daylight.
And the party is going to be like nothing we’ve ever seen.
“A total eclipse is an absolutely amazing, spiritual, knee-buckling, jaw-dropping experience you can’t even imagine,” said Dan McGlaun, a Clayton resident and eclipse expert who has seen 14 of the events. “There’s no way I can explain it, you just have to be there and see it and trust it’s going to be the coolest thing ever.”
Johnson County is set to be directly in the path of a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. For nearly four minutes, the moon will completely cover the sun, turning daytime into night.
Local officials are expecting thousands of people to travel to the county to experience totality, and preparations have been underway to ready businesses and residents for the excitement. Special events are being planned, hotel rooms are being booked and people are encouraged to come up with unique ways to celebrate the rare celestial event.
Even with less than 12 months to go, it’s never too early to start thinking about the eclipse.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to not only attract visitors, but also make sure they have a great time, so they’ll return time and time again,” said Kenneth Kosky, executive director of Festival County Indiana. “To pull that off, we want to plan in advance to make sure we have plenty of eclipse glasses, plenty of things to do, and make sure we have more important things such as restrooms and food available.”
The path of the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, will start in Mexico, heading northeast into the United States before crossing over the center of Indiana. Johnson County is cleaved in half by the path of the eclipse, meaning the whole county will experience totality. This is the first total solar eclipse to cross Indiana since 1869. The next won’t do so until 2153.
The moon starts to cover the sun at 1:50 p.m. on April 8, with totality lasting from 3:05.52 p.m. until 3:09.54 p.m. By 4:35 p.m., the event will be over.
”As the eclipse progresses, things start happening really, really fast. The shadows get very distinct on the ground as the sun becomes a point source. The birds and insects start roosting as if it’s evening. The sky gets very dark, there’s an eerie quality, a grayish, almost surreal environment,” McGlaun said.
McGlaun operates the website eclipse2024.org, where he’s aggregating information on special events, calculating simulations of what you can expect in different communities and piecing together every possible piece of eclipse information he can find.
On April 13, he addressed the Franklin Chamber of Commerce to talk about the best ways to take advantage.
“People love celestial events. The love feeling like they’re a part of the cosmos, and it’s something innate in us,” he said.
Kosky spoke at the event as well, as we inch closer to an event he and the crew at Festival County have been thinking about the eclipse for years now.
When Johnson County was in the path of a partial solar eclipse in 2017, they saw how excited local residents were to witness the moon cover part of the sun. But they also saw how the communities in the path of totality, such as those in Kentucky and Tennessee, were overwhelmed by the number of people who came to experience the eclipse, Kosky said.
The eclipse promises to bring increased traffic and visitors to Johnson County, Kosky said. But at the same time, it offers local businesses an opportunity to capitalize. Officials spoke with representatives from Casper, Wyoming, which was in the path of the total eclipse in 2017.
Leading up to the celestial event, hotels were charging $750 per night for lodging, with a five-night minimum, Kosky said.
“They actually didn’t do enough marketing, fearing it would be too big of an event. But they still generated $7.5 million in economic impact for just that one eclipse,” he said.
Already, hotels around Franklin are sold out on April 8 and the days surrounding it. The rooms that are available are charging nearly $1,000 per night, Kosky said.
To prepare, Festival County Indiana ordered 100,000 pairs of eclipse glasses — special eyewear designed to let people look at the sun safely while the moon covers it — to distribute to people.
Marketing campaigns are planned to attract outside visitors, in addition to letting local residents how they can get in on the action, Kosky said. A website, eclipsefestival2024.org, and a Facebook page have been created to update people on events, activities and other information related to the eclipse.
Festival County Indiana will also award grants to communities and entities that want to plan unique events.
“Let’s say an organization wants to do a themed party, they can apply for grants to help up the ante,” Kosky said.
Local communities are in the process of planning their own events, but in Franklin, the core of the celebration will be a three-day bonanza of music, food trucks and other activities at the DriveHubler.com Amphitheater.
BOLDAviation at Indy South Greenwood Airport is organizing an eclipse fly-in, with food trucks, live music, entertainment, airplanes on display and more, Kosky said.
“The goal is to create a party that everyone will enjoy, but also remember until the next eclipse,” he said.
AT A GLANCE
2024 Eclipse
What: Johnson County will be in the path of a solar eclipse in 2024, with the entire county experiencing totality for between three and four minutes.
When: April 8, 2024
Time of totality: 3:05.52 p.m. until 3:09.54 p.m.
Information: To learn about events planned throughout Johnson County as we get closer to the eclipse, go to eclipsefestival2024.org or the county’s eclipse Facebook page, Eclipse Festival 2024. Broad information on the event for the county, the rest of Indiana and other places in the United States can be found at Eclipse2024.org.
