As an annular solar eclipse approaches, this California county is preparing for a tourism boom

It is the only California county where the celestial phenomenon occurs – when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth Ring of fire – It will be fully visible. The San Francisco Bay area is expected to witness between 80% and 90% of the eclipse.

The 2023 annular solar eclipse will cross North America, Central America, and South America. In the United States, the eclipse begins at 9:13 a.m. in Oregon and ends just after noon local time in Texas. The last annular eclipse was in 2012, and the last total solar eclipse, where the moon completely blocks the sun, was in 2017.

In the Modoc, the cultural center is Alturas, the county seat and One compact city. We have already seen outright demand for accommodation.

“Everything is pretty much full. Hotels in town are full and even Airbnbs and Hipcamps. Our campgrounds are open, but I’m sure they’re busy and full,” Modoc National Forest spokeswoman Susie Johnson told SFGATE.

Furthermore, Johnson added, the county’s deer and waterfowl hunting seasons kicked off this month.

“If you are in the national forest, we ask visitors to be aware of deer season,” she said. “Please wear bright clothes. Hunters are in the forest too.

Throughout the year, hotel rooms across the county were taken over. The Fort Bidwell hotel, located about 50 miles northeast of Alturas, has not had an open reservation in months. “We’ve been booked since January,” Crystal Whitaker, the hotel’s assistant manager, told SFGATE.

At the Super 8 hotel on Main Street in Alturas, the general manager said demand for rooms unexpectedly started a few months ago.

“It seemed like people slept on it, and all of a sudden, one day, people just started booking,” Jimmy Garrett said. “We had 31 people booked within 24 hours. This is not normal for us. We are constantly filling up but it is more gradual than that.

Jarrett said it seemed as if Alturas’ tourism industry had also been blindsided by the eclipse, and was poised to potentially miss a moment to capitalize on the influx of visitors.

“I felt like Paul Revere — I was walking around screaming, ‘There’s going to be an eclipse!’ ‘There’s going to be an eclipse!'” Jarrett said. “I told the Chamber of Commerce members and no one did anything about it. But now there are plans.”

Modoc National Forest & Friends is hosting an eclipse viewing event at Alturas Rotary Fields on Saturday. There is a BBQ the night before from the Lion’s Club and a pancake breakfast from the Rotary Club to start off the day of the eclipse.

The partial eclipse begins just after 8 a.m. on October 14, and the annular, or maximum point of the eclipse, begins at about 9:19 a.m. and is expected to last for two minutes. But those precious moments are enough to draw thousands to a quiet corner of California.

“We are a county of about 9,000 people — we will have more visitors than population,” Jarrett said. “It will be something else.”