Business owners anticipating boom from solar eclipse

"We've been having numerous people call for reservations," said Brown. "We've been booked since last August."

She wears many hats at her dad's inn in Beatrice.

It's one of many places in the area now sold out for the up-coming total solar eclipse.

It will happen on August 21st and Beatrice sits right in the middle of it's path.

Anyone in town on that day will see the sun blocked by the moon for about two and a half minutes.

In town is a special NASA viewing site, which will help a small community of 12,000 people more than triple in number for at least one weekend.

"While people are waiting to get on those shuttle buses," said Lora Young, the director of the Beatrice Chamber of Commerce, "they'll have time to shop and hopefully we'll have a lot of that activity."

That's the hope of shoe salesman Trevor Chadwick.

"A lot of them are coming from thousands of miles away," said Chadwick. "We're hoping to be the owns that they come in and we give them whatever they need."

Long time Dairy Queen owner Lavern Engelman feels the same way.

"We should be very busy," said Engelman, "naturally with ice cream but also the food side of it."

The solar eclipse weekend will be one these business owners say they will never forget.

"We have a good number of people on the waiting list that have been waiting to get a room," said Brown.