BOONEVILLE, Ark. — Just before 2 p.m. on Monday, the city of Booneville and other parts of the state will go completely dark.
To celebrate the occasion, decided to throw a three-day long party. Although the festival is only three days, it's been on one city council member's mind for much longer.
"Two years ago, I was watching a webinar by the Arkansas Tourism Department who talked about how we were going to have this big event, the eclipse in Arkansas and it was going to be a huge tourist opportunity. So I started gathering people in our town in my life to create an eclipse festival to take advantage of that tourism opportunity," Stacy Holbert said.
Since then Holbert has been working tirelessly, making sure all the events are ready to go.
"We're having a music festival on the weekend," she said. "[On] the eclipse day, we're gonna have music again, but we're having a vendor fair. We have a petting zoo. We have activities for the kids. We have food trucks, and then we're gonna watch the eclipse. This is a beautiful area and we wanted to bring people here and show this off."
On top of that, the local businesses and student athletes around town are also benefiting from the eclipse and festival.
"It’s been amazing for us in the mercantile on main shops and we have several vendors who have made special shirts and keychains and hats for the event," Sonja Richards, manager of Mercantile on Main in Booneville, said.
"Our school is pretty small and we don't have a whole bunch of money in our funding, but raising this money for it will get us the money to go to the camp and the tournament this summer," Dessi Carolan, a Volleyball player for Magazine High School, said.
The total eclipse will last for 3 minutes and 27 seconds in Booneville from 1:49 p.m. to a little after 1:52 p.m.
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