Arkansas is prime real estate for next year’s total solar eclipse.

A springtime total solar eclipse has skygazers headed for The Natural State, which lies directly under the path of the celestial event. The eclipse will appear over Arkansas on April 8, 2024, beginning at 1:45 p.m. local time. The final exit of the moon’s shadow from the state will occur at 2 p.m. CDT.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and earth, an alignment known as syzygy. Arkansas is in a prime location for viewing the event this time around, as the entirety of Interstate 30 from Texarkana to Little Rock lies within the path of total solar eclipse as well as Interstate 40 from Atkins to nearly Lonoke.

State tourism officials are viewing the heavenly phenomenon from a different angle, that of potential visitors and their dollars. Estimates vary on the possible visitors the event could attract — ranging from a couple hundred thousand to 1.5 million, depending on the source — but suffice to say, the eclipse has the potential to be Arkansas’s largest eco-tourism event ever.

“Arkansas has never seen an event like this, and likely will not again in my lifetime,” said Kim Williams last year to an audience at Arkansas State University. Williams is director of Arkansas’s Great River Road, a travel writer for the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism and project manager for the department’s 2024 eclipse preparations.

The 2024 total eclipse, the first to fly directly overhead of Arkansas in 106 years, will feature a zone of totality stretching 123 miles. About two-thirds of Arkansas will be in the viewing area, including Hot Springs, Little Rock, Conway and Jonesboro.

"A total solar eclipse is a must-see item, and none has crossed Arkansas since 1918," said Carl Freyaldenhoven, eclipse resource coordinator for the Central Arkansas Astronomical Society for an August article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "Eclipses are a display of nature in action. You can experience this eclipse with your fellow humans as a commonality, not a dividing factor but a uniting event."

“Arkansas has never seen an event like this, and likely will not again in my lifetime.”

With the expected influx of people, RV sites, hotels and campsites are already booking fast for dates on and around April 8. Many operators already have waiting lists for eclipse-gazers seeking lodging.

“So far out of 26 sites, 75% [of those] are already booked for the Eclipse weekend,” Jenny Hardaway, park manager of Lakeview RV Resort in Jonesboro told KAIT Channel 8 last month. “This is not an event where we can fly by the seat of our pants and show up at an RV park and hope that we get a site to be able to watch the eclipse.”

Many so-called “totality towns” — those on the centerline of the eclipse’s path — are hard at work creating festivals and other special events to accompany the event. These are in part to commemorate the celestial happening and also a means to coax a portion of the visitors to linger and spend in place before heading back home.

“You can do absolutely nothing, and the people are still going to come,” Williams told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in April. “But are they going to have a good experience? No, not if there’s nothing for them to do. We want to get them in town early, we want them to stay put, and we want them to stay late.”