Following the failure of the landing gear to extend normally; a BE-1900 diverted to a more suitable airport; declared an emergency and landed safely after manually extending the gear.

Narrative

We were configuring for approach to landing. We lowered the flaps to 17 and then the gear. While the gear was in transition the circuit breaker popped and the gear handle remained illuminated; at that point we left the traffic pattern; brought the gear back up; reset the circuit breaker and tried again. The breaker popped again while in transition. We then informed the tower we had a landing gear issue and would get back to them in a minute. Approach assigned us an altitude and heading. We leveled off and referenced the QRH for the manual gear extension. We called Operations and advised them of the situation. They called Dispatch who provided an amendment to divert to ZZZ. While diverting; we manually extended the landing gear and got three green indications. We advised Operations of our situation and that we had declared an emergency. The fire trucks were at the runway as we made a low pass while Maintenance viewed the gear and advised it appeared down and locked. We entered the pattern and landed normally with no further incident. As the passenger deplaned she thanked us for keeping her informed of the situation and reassuring her everything would be OK.