Thousands celebrate first total solar eclipse visible from Indiana in over a century

INDIANAPOLIS (CN) — Thousands looked skyward in Naptown on Monday to see a total solar eclipse, the first time in over 150 years that a complete occlusion of the sun has been visible from what is now Indiana. 

The partial eclipse began around 1:50 p.m., with the early afternoon sky swiftly and noticeably becoming darker. By 3:00 p.m. a premature dusk had set in, and a few moments later, the eclipse became total.

Onlookers in Indianapolis' White River State Park cheered and gasped as the sun's ghostly corona writhed from behind the moon, solar prominences just barely visible with the naked eye. 

"Yeah ok, I can definitely see how you could start a religion over this," one eclipse-watcher joked to their friends.

Total occlusion only lasted a few minutes. Daylight returned soon after, and as it did, the park erupted in applause.

"It was transcendental. Transcendental," a Chicagoan named Blad Moreno told Courthouse News after the eclipse had passed. 

Moreno was far from the only out-of-towner to visit Indianapolis for the eclipse. According to the Indianapolis tourism organization Visit Indy, the city saw visitors from all 50 states and 33 other countries on Monday. Many of Indianapolis' hotels were packed to the brim with these thousands of visitors, who ballooned the city's nominal population of 881,000 to over a million. 

"We are anticipating 125,000 visitors to Indy today for the solar eclipse," Morgan Snyder, Visit Indy's Senior Director of Public Relations, told Courthouse News in an email.        

Anecdotally, Indianapolis area native and Indiana state government employee Andy Schingel also said the city seemed busier than he recalled in recent memory. 

"I'm seeing a lot of cars with out of state license plates," Schingel said. "The state's been promoting this a lot, especially for the parks."

Snyder corroborated that the city had made free eclipse glasses available in White River State Park and in its public libraries, and that it was hosting several free and ticketed eclipse-watching festivals. The solar syzygy was also an economic boon, with Snyder expecting Indianapolis to see millions in tourism revenue.

"We’re anticipating anywhere from $24 million to $48 million in economic impact," she said.  

Indianapolis was only one of numerous U.S. cities and towns in the path of totality for the eclipse — the roughly 110 mile-wide strip of shadow ran from Mexico and southwest Texas up northeast through southern Oklahoma, Arkansas, southern Missouri and Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, before straddling the U.S.-Canada border through northern Connecticut, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. 

Fears of cloud cover over the Indiana capital, predicted earlier in the week, proved unfounded. The weather remained clear and bright throughout the day.

Other parts of the country were not so lucky. In central Texas, eclipse watchers had to look at the sun not just through eclipse glasses but overcast skies. 

One such Texas eclipse watcher was Paul Hertz, who viewed the event from Zilker Metropolitan Park in Austin. Like many others in the area, Hertz and his family made plans to see the event in Austin over a year in advance.

Hertz said in an interview that they picked Austin “because it was going to have the clearest weather for the eclipse” based on its historically sunny weather. While they did not get the clear weather they were hoping for, Hertz and his family were happy to have caught a glimpse of totality through breaks in the cloud cover.

Another Austin eclipse watcher, Maria McCarthy, had traveled from Richmond, Virginia for the day. It was her first time seeing an eclipse, she said, ands she cheered as the city began to shift into darkness beneath the clouds.

 “I loved it," McCarthy said. “I wish it would have been a little bit clearer, but at least we got a little peeks of it. So it was good.”

Back in Indianapolis, the cosmic event took on an especially personal connotation for two women watching from the banks of the White River, Jessica Cosper and Elizabeth Waltman. Unlike McCarthy, the pair had seen an eclipse before, in August 2017. The path of that eclipse travelled northwest to southeast across the continental U.S., and marked an important milestone in both of their lives. 

Though they asked Courthouse News not to publish the details of that deeply personal life event, both Cosper and Waltman — wearing custom, matching "Twice in a Lifetime" eclipse t-shirts — said Monday's eclipse was a chance to reflect on how far they'd come since 2017.     

"It's a monumental rebirth event for both of us," Cosper said. 

"We've walked this journey together. It's a blessing. It's nothing we did individually," Waltman added.

Moreno agreed, in his own way. The eclipse, he said, had given him a new perspective on his life and others'.

"It let you know how insignificant we really are," he said. "We're specks of dust, You know? Just specks of dust." 

Follow @djbyrnes1

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