Sun worshippers.

AuthorMartin, Edward
PositionSTATEWIDE: West

The frog will swallow the summer sun for less than 3 minutes, but leaders of western North Carolina's [dollar]2.3 billion annual hospitality and tourism industry figure that'll boost fortunes until the creek runs dry. "Nvdo tsulisihvsgiyi"--that's Cherokee folklore for solar eclipse--will lure 100,000 or more visitors to the region next month.

How many more is unknown, which is triggering a military-scale response by local, state and federal authorities. The National Park Service says it sold out more than 1,300 tickets for a viewing area atop 6,643-foot Clingmans Dome, in Swain County, at [dollar]30 each in a matter of hours.

"We've been planning for this for 16 months," says Nick Breedlove, director of the Jackson County Tourism Development Authority. "In tourism, we call an event like this the first date," he says. "We have people coming from as far as the United Kingdom and France for the eclipse itself, but most will stay a few days or a week."

Steve Morse, who heads the hospitality and tourism curriculum at Western Carolina University's business school in Cullowhee, elaborates. "Many first-time tourists later become business investors" or buy second homes, he says.

Total eclipses like the one on Aug. 21 are rare--the most similar one that swept across the nation from Pacific to Atlantic was in 1918. The first effects will be seen shortly after 1 p.m., and by about 2:30, parts of Cherokee, Graham, Swain, Clay, Jackson and Transylvania counties will plunge into near total darkness. In Andrews, in Cherokee County, that will be about 2 minutes and 38 seconds; in Sylva, about 1:44 The times are brief but among the longest in the 14-state path of the total eclipse. Astronomers say effects can be startling: Bright...

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