The World’s Largest Time Capsule Is About To Be Opened In Seward, Nebraska

In 1975, Seward local and former store owner Harold Keith Davisson, then a senior citizen, constructed a 45-ton vault on the front lawn of his store.

“He wanted his grandchildren to know what HIS life was like in 1975,” Davisson’s daughter Trish Johnson told Roadside America. “He was convinced that they wouldn’t remember him.”

On that front it was a pretty good effort. Rather than building any old time capsule, he had built the largest time capsule in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, who awarded it this title in 1977.

Before long, however, Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia, protested that their “crypt of civilization” sealed in May 1940 was larger. Davisson argued back that the “crypt” was not a real time capsule as it was really a room in a university. 

While the Guinness Book of World Records responded by scrapping the category of “largest time capsule” altogether, Davisson settled the dispute in his own manner: slapping a giant concrete pyramid on top of the first capsule with even more objects inside. Though the Guinness Book of World Records may not acknowledge it anymore, the structure is now the world’s largest time capsule, and it is to be opened on July 4, 2025.

The time capsule is filled with over 5,000 objects from the time, including a bikini, some floral men’s swimwear, a (then) brand new Chevrolet Vega, and a motorcycle. 

While the initial time capsule has not been opened, the pyramid was opened during a “dress rehearsal” last year for the final unveiling. After six hours of trying to break through the concrete, the team of town residents found a number of handwritten letters, murals painted inside by locals, and a trusty Toyota Corolla, though looking a little worse-for-wear.

We won’t know the full glut of treasures awaiting in the vault below until it is opened at the beginning of next month, but Johnson assured Roadside America that rumors that her father simply filled it with objects he was unable to sell in his shop was not true. 

Davisson passed away in 1999, a quarter of a century before his time capsule was due to be opened. Before he died, he warned his daughter that there is not enough room to open the lid of the capsule from inside the pyramid, and some more time-capsule-smashing may be necessary to get at the Chevy, motorcycle, and trove of 1970s memorabilia inside.