Preparing for a Total Solar Eclipse in Northern Maine

Key Facts

‘WHERE ARE 20,000 PEOPLE GOING TO PEE?’ Businesses and planning committees are eager for visitors, but some in remote Aroostook County are not sure how they feel about lying smack in the path of totality.
Few ever set foot in Aroostook County, a remote northern expanse where residents are prone to suspect — not without reason — that no one south of Bangor even knows that they exist.
So the news that “the County,” as it is known in Maine, would be smack in the path of totality for next month’s solar eclipse — making it a destination for potentially thousands of visitors — has generated mixed emotions in this proudly unpretentious place.
“It’s a little new for us here, so it is stressful,” said Lindsay Anderson, manager of Brookside Bakery in Houlton, a town of 6,000 that borders Canada, where the plan for eclipse weekend includes baking 500 whoopie pies, Maine’s official “state treat.”