Here's A Sneak Peak At The America 250 Time Capsule That Will Be Buried Until July 4, 2276

The Trump administration are making time capsules great again!

As part of celebrating America’s 250th birthday, a time capsule will be buried in Philadelphia with items from our current times and from the past.

The capsule will be buried on July 4th and will be remained buried until 2276.

CBS News provided details on what items will be included:

As America approaches this milestone anniversary, many celebrations are looking back at our past 250 years, but one looks forward.

Tom Medema, project manager for America’s Time Capsule, says, “The time capsule gives everybody the chance to talk to the future. It is a form of time travel for ideas and for physical things.”

Medema is responsible for assembling a team of experts across disciplines – scientists, lawmakers, librarians – to fulfill a 2016 mandate from Congress to honor the semiquincentennial, which states a time capsule shall be buried in Philadelphia at Independence National Historical Park on the 4th of July, 2026, to be unearthed on America’s 500th birthday, on July 4, 2276. The law mandates the capsule will contain “books, manuscripts, miscellaneous printed matter, memorabilia, relics, and other materials.”

Who decides what gets preserved? “We wanted all states and territories and D.C. to be represented, to choose their own objects to submit,” said Medema.

According to Rosie Rios, the chair of America 250, “It has to be sea-to-shining-sea. It has to be grassroots community-driven. It has to be personal.”

At the White House Visitor Center, guests can compose their own messages to the future. “The goal is to have as many folks as possible participate in this, and then also choose a select few that will be included in our time capsule,” said Rios. The messages being submitted, she said, express “a lot of hope. There’s a lot of optimism.”

But even before choosing what goes inside the time capsule, there’s the question of how to ensure those precious items will survive 15 feet below ground until they’re unearthed in 2276.

“The existence of a time capsule to last 250 years has never been done,” said Mike Berilla, director of the Fabrication Technology Office at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). “We are taking on this challenge and just doubling, tripling down and saying, yeah, we’re going to make another 250 years.”

Asked what we’ve learned from past time capsules, Berilla said, “Most time capsules fail because water comes in. Initially we had three different designs. We had a box, we had a star, and we had a cylinder. And the star would have been a nightmare, but so cool to pull off!” But the edges mean water could get in.

The stainless-steel cylindrical design they settled on weighs one ton even before being loaded with the contents, which have been mailed to NIST from across the 50 states, D.C., and five territories.

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West Virginia sent a piece of coal carved into the shape of the state of West Virginia. Ohio sent a piece of fabric from the Wright Flyer, with an original statement from Orville Wright.

Archivists at the Library of Congress determined what will stand the test of time, and rejected submissions that won’t, including anything that will decay, decompose, or affect the other objects around them. No adhesive, no leather, no apple pie!

What the capsule will hold includes an iPhone 17; Native American artwork; essays from students; coins and pins; a Coca-Cola bottle; and even a feather from the eagle that accompanied Union soldiers into battle.

Here’s a sneak peak of the capsule:

The Burlington Free Press reported a school in Vermont recently opened a time capsule from 1976 that celebrated the United States bicentennial.

In May 1976, students and staff at Albert D. Lawton Intermediate buried a time capsule near the front entrance of the school.

Inside students had tucked trinkets from their era: a girl’s gym uniform, an essay in French, bicentennial stamps and coins, test tubes with water samples. Cassettes and film strips sat alongside a copy of the Suburban List, Essex Junction’s weekly newspaper at the time.

Last week, many of those schoolmates and employees returned to campus to see the contents unveiled for the first time in fifty years during a packed outdoor ceremony.

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“Opening this capsule reminds us that every generation of students believes they are living in ordinary times, but ordinary eventually becomes history,” said Lawton alum Beth Lampert Levine, who was in eighth grade in 1976.

An item found in Albert D. Lawton Intermediate School’s 1976 time capsule, unearthed in May 2026.
“These moments become the story of your life,” she told a crop of current middle schoolers, “so today is not just about opening a time capsule from the past, it is also about recognizing we are all creating memories for the future.”

Those students buried their own time capsule that day in the same spot, where it will remain sealed until 2076.

Fifty years ago kids at a local middle school buried a time capsule. Some of them last week got to see what was important back in the day. https://t.co/yvmtAxH9No

— BurlingtonFreePress (@bfp_news) June 2, 2026