WASHINGTON - Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has a warning for those looking for tickets to January's presidential inauguration ceremony: "Do not buy tickets, do not scalp tickets. Do not get swindled in this process." Tickets are free and are to be distributed only by the members of Congress to whom they have been given. Rep. Jackson says that he has not yet decided how to decide who will get his tickets.

None of those tickets are in the hands of the members of Congress yet; they will be held in a secure location until a week before the inauguration.

The online ticket site StubHub.com lists tickets to the swearing-in ceremony at $1950-$9975.

Many estimates range between one and two million people could attend, but that has some city leaders worried the excitement will turn to disappointment if plans aren’t made to accommodate everyone.

The Joint Congressional Committee on the Inaugural Ceremonies is seriously considering holding new events that don't require tickets so that everyone who wants to, can take part in the ceremonies.

With seventy days to go before inauguration, workers outside the White House took no holiday. They poured concrete for the presidential inaugural parade reviewing stand under construction, as local visitors talked about their plans for the Obama inauguration.

"I have my brothers and sisters who will be coming down, my nieces" said Eugenia Charles.

"We have a bunch of Californians who are going to stay with us," said Matt Richer, a Germantown resident. “We have a pretty small place but it’s going to be full.”

No one knows how many people are planning to come, but it may dwarf even events as big as the 1995 Million Man March, which stretched the length of the National Mall. President Clinton’s 1993 inauguration held the record for the most Metro riders until being displaced by the events surrounding Ronald Reagan’s June 2004 funeral.

Hotels are booked for a radius of 60-100 miles around the city. The scramble for inaugural tickets is occupying members of Congress, who get about 500 tickets each. But Senator Jim Webb has 15,000 requests; Senator Feinstein has 8000 requests. Even Republican Senator Burr has received 6,000, so far.

"And you'll see that people are just gonna come," said D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (web|news|bio) . "Y'all come -- that what this is going to be like. And if y'all gonna come, the question is: Are we ready for it?"

Norton stopped taking requests on Friday, after being overwhelmed with thousands of requests. She warns the inaugural will collapse under its own weight unless planners make clear not everyone can come to the Capitol. She suggest setting up satellite sites with big TVs at places like the Convention Center or RFK Stadium.

"You’ve got to say: 'You go to this place; you go to that place, you go to that place. There’s going to be no more room on the mall,’" said Norton.

It seems many are coming.

“We have family coming down from New York, because they are very, very excited about Obama,” said one woman.

Chicago resident Linda Gattis says she is coming to D.C. for the inauguration, tickets or no tickets. "We're going on the same hope he talked about, and the faith that this will be done. It's too important not to be there."

Maggie Thielen, of Arlington, lamented she would be in Colorado for the inaugural. But she said she has “friends from Texas” who are “going to stay in my house while I’m out of town.”

Del. Norton says she expects lawmakers to focus on the inaugural crush when they return to Washington next week.