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Keepsakes from all 50 states and every American territory will be buried as part of “America’s Time Capsule,” in Independence National Historical Park on the Fourth of July Saturday at 8:30 a.m.. The capsule won’t be reopened 250 years from now, in 2276.
So, if you’re reading this anytime in the next 175 years or so, you most likely won’t be around for the capsule unsealing.
Luckily, there’s another time capsule ceremony happening in Philly — that will be opened in our lifetimes at the nearby National Constitution Center — on Saturday at 1 p.m. in its Signers’ Hall.
The five capsules filled with items selected by five families from across the nation, will be opened on Sept. 17, 2037 — the 250th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia.
“We wanted to create an opportunity for families to be able to contribute their own items of meaning to the American story,” said Julie Silverbrook, the center’s chief learning and content officer.
Walk-ins are welcome for the ceremony, but you can reserve free tickets at the center’s website. Saturday will also be a free admission day at the Constitution Center, thanks to a sponsorship from Citizen Travelers. There will also be live performances of “Schoolhouse Rock Live,” a recreated Revolutionary War encampment, historic reenactors, face painting and craft tables.
Visitors can also trace their family histories through an interactive “Stories of Us” Discover Center, which opens Saturday and runs till the end of August. Doors open at 10 a.m.
Families across the nation submitted videos and written applications explaining what items they would put in the wooden boxes. There were only a couple limits on what could go in the time capsules: it had to be non-perishable and it needed to have meaning.
The center then selected five families, from Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Nevada and North Carolina.
Silverbrook also encouraged families that weren’t selected to still make their own time capsules at home, and the center partnered with Scholastic Magazine with a guide on how to do it.
The items the chosen families selected included a playbill for the musical “Hamilton,” a baseball, a miniature replica of the Liberty Bell, and family letters.
“This is just something that’s personally meaningful to them, but it was also reflective of the connection that they feel to the larger American story,” Silverbrook said.
Silverbrook said that the families will be invited back to the Constitution Center to unseal their capsules, and “reflect on the progress of their families and the nation in that intervening decade.”
By the time 2027 rolls around, some of the children in the selected families will be voting-age adults.
The time capsule project will be a first for the center, as part of what they’re calling a “civic decade” where they will focus on reviving curiosity and engagement in civic life, institutions and learning — as the Founders had to between signing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
“They were building a nation, right?” Silverbrook exclaimed. “Our first constitution was the Articles of Confederation, didn’t work out, created a new system of national government. We’re really defining who we were as a nation in that parallel decade, 250 years ago. And so we’re really seeing this decade, 250 years later, as an opportunity to inspire civic renewal and to really reaffirm our commitment to our highest ideals and to sustaining constitutional democracy for the next 250 years.”
