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A half century ago, Mountain View officials buried a time capsule in Pioneer Park with the idea of excavating the capsule and ceremonially unveiling its contents this year. The plan has now been scrapped after the city discovered earlier this month that water and mold had damaged nearly all of the objects inside the capsule.
“We were all really disappointed there wasn’t more material that was recoverable,” said Bill Kolb, Mountain View’s assistant library director. “We were excited to see what the people of 1976 thought would be important for us to know about in 2026.”
In 1976, Mountain View commemorated the country’s bicentennial anniversary with a series of events. As part of the festivities, people collected items for a time capsule over the course of the entire year, according to Pamela Baird, president of the Mountain View Historical Association.
Some of the contributions included high school yearbooks, a letter from the White House, newspaper clippings, a bicentennial flag, early city maps and other documents, Baird wrote in a historical association newsletter.
To accommodate all of the items, former Mayor Joseph Cusimano, of Cusimano Family Colonial Mortuary, donated a child’s concrete burial vault as the vessel, Baird told the Voice. The city then buried the time capsule outside the Mountain View Public Library on Jan. 7, 1977. A plaque marked the site at Pioneer Park.
According to a news article at the time, the vault was “water-proofed.” However, that turned out not to be the case – a fact that the city only discovered earlier this month.
The city had planned to hold a formal unveiling of the time capsule in September. To prepare for the event, city officials excavated the site on Aug. 4. When the capsule lid was removed the next day, they saw that more than half of the vessel was filled with water, Kolb recounted. Even the plastic bags inside the capsule were breached, he said.
In addition to water damage, there was mold growth inside the capsule, making it difficult to salvage most of the objects, according to a city news release. As a result, the unveiling event was canceled.
“It would be somewhat anticlimactic at this point,” Kolb said.
A plan to rebury the time capsule and dig it up again in 50 years to commemorate the country’s tricentennial anniversary has also been nixed, Kolb said. However, the city still plans to display objects from the capsule that were not damaged by water or mold.
The salvaged objects include commemorative coins, a flag that flew over the Moffett Field Naval Air Station and a replica of a plaque that was part of NASA’s first mission to the outer planets, according to the news release. The objects will be on temporary display at the Mountain View Public Library in September.
The display will also provide some historical context to the objects, Kolb said. The hope is that visitors will have a better understanding of what Mountain View was like half a century ago and how it compares to today.
“We’re trying to honor the spirit of the time capsule,” he said.
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