While we spent our time on April 8th at the Jasper County Fairgrounds assisting with the event sponsored by the Embarras River Tourism Council, there were many other planned events throughout the county. We would love to gather photos from these events for not only our record of history, but for the tourism council’s website.
We found so many people from other states came to our community for this event and our experience was a positive one. We met many individuals and families who were so thankful our little community had places for viewing, experiences such as having the science teacher as a speaker, and a guy on a golf cart (thank you Jason and Michelle Fulton) driving around assisting the elderly and injured to get where they needed to go. We were extremely amazed at the cleanliness of the guests at the fairgrounds. We have been to many events both on and off of the fairgrounds, and this by far was one of the cleanest events at the end of the day.
We would personally like to thank the city workers who graciously helped us with electric, barriers, and discussions about potential traffic needs to ensure the event flowed smoothly. Local officers worked to keep the traffic issues as manageable as possible as the influx of people who were here for the eclipse or were traveling home through Newton all tried to leave at the same time.
We have seen so many photos of families spending the day together to watch this historic event. We saw people attending our little local church’s pancake breakfast (two churches combined for this event) from different states who may never have been to Newton otherwise. We received so many compliments on the kindness of our citizens, the beauty of our fairgrounds, and the helpfulness of everyone they interacted with.
We are extremely proud of not just our community, but the kindness and consideration of those who interacted with our guests. These people saw something special about our county and wanted to come here and experience the eclipse with us.
We know having a large influx of people can disrupt the quiet, easy nature of our community and we are thankful that people stepped up and understood that this too shall pass and took the moment to appreciate that traffic isn’t like this every day.
