Small town businesses are embracing the eclipse crowds, as weekend festivities heat up before Monday’s big event
The last time a total solar eclipse passed through this Texas town, horses and buggies filled the streets and cotton fetched 9 cents a pound. Nearly 150 years later, one thing hasn’t changed: the threat of clouds blocking the view.
Overcast skies are forecast for Monday’s cosmic wonder across Texas, already packing in eclipse chasers to the delight of small town businesses.
As the moon covers the sun, daytime darkness will follow a narrow corridor — from Mexico’s Pacific coast to Texas and 14 other states all the way to Maine and the eastern fringes of Canada. The best U.S. forecast: northern New England.
Like other communities along the path of totality, Waxahachie, a half-hour’s drive south of Dallas, is pulling out all the stops with a weekend full of concerts and other festivities.
It’s the region’s first total solar eclipse since 1878. The next one won’t be for almost another 300 years.
“I feel so lucky that I don’t have to go anywhere,” the Ellis County Museum’s Suzette Pylant said Saturday as she welcomed visitors in town for the eclipse. “I get to just look out my window, walk out my door and look up.”
She’s praying the weather will cooperate, as are the owners of all the shops clustered around the historic courthouse made of red sandstone and pink granite in the center of town.
