But the millions flocking to see the eclipse will also mean a logistical headache, a claim on local resources in places like Wickliffe that have few resources left.

“Maybe we could have handled it,” Mr. Lane said. “But here we are not knowing if we’re going to have 20,000 people. We sit here with no city police and have to depend on the sheriff. I’ve heard estimates they’ll be just lying on the street.”

State officials talk of half a million people coming to western Kentucky, where the sun, moon and earth will line up most precisely, the point of greatest eclipse. The epicenter will be 100 miles to the east, near Hopkinsville, which has been preparing for this for more than a decade.

Hopkinsville has called itself Eclipseville and is planning to host as many as 200,000 people, more than six times its population. City officials are expecting a $30 million economic boon — “we actually think that may be conservative at this point,” the mayor, Carter Hendricks, said.

Ballard County, where Wickliffe sits, has the distinction of being the first place in Kentucky to find itself in the shadow of the moon. (Nearly all of the county lies in the path of total eclipse; Wickliffe is about a mile outside). The county has a lot of experience with the whims of forces beyond its control. Most of it has not been good.

The county was prosperous once, dotted with thriving towns and flush with wealth from the tobacco fields. This was before people quit smoking, huge lawsuits were filed and the government bought out tobacco farmers. Still, hundreds were making a good living at the uranium enrichment plant outside of Paducah. A Cold War relic, the plant eventually succumbed to its outdated technology and shut down in 2013.

The blow was softened by the presence of the paper mill, with hundreds of solid union jobs in the production of high-quality magazine paper. But the outlook for printed magazines is not so different from that for cigarettes.