BENTON, IL – (William McPherson, Benton Gazette. Please click on the link for the full story. Here is an excerpt below.)
Those who have received unexpected last minute guests know the hustle and bustle that goes into accommodating them. Now try 1,000 of them.
That’s exactly what went down in Benton last week, as more than 1,000 people viewed the Great American Solar Eclipse at the Benton Community Park on Monday, according to early estimates.
“I know we had people from Canada, and I will say we had at least 12 states represented,” said Benton Community Park Superintendent Bill “Scooter” Nelms, who said the crowd began pouring in around 7:30 a.m. with many exiting after the 1:21 p.m. totality event had ended, and a few sticking around until around 3 p.m. when the entire eclipse event had dissipated. “We had not a cloud in the sky throughout the whole time,” Nelms noted. This was in contrast to the many people who had the misfortune of missing most of the eclipse at SIU Arena in Carbondale due to cloudy weather conditions.
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