Key West time capsule opened 50 years after schoolchildren buried it
A 1976 time capsule buried by May Sands fifth-graders opened in Key West with a cassette, slides and a Miami Herald still inside, 50 years after they were sealed away.
Dr. Corey Malcom and Key West Mayor Danise “DeeDee” Henriquez stood over a mayonnaise jar encased in concrete on April 6, 2026, as crews finally broke into the 50-year-old time capsule buried by schoolchildren at May Sands School. What emerged from the ground at 1400 United Street was damp but largely intact, including the complete March 23, 1976 edition of the Miami Herald, a box of slides, a cassette tape with children’s voices and endangered-species information from 1976.
The capsule was buried on April 6, 1976 by fifth-graders in the Gifted and Talented program at then-May Sands School as part of Key West’s U.S. Bicentennial celebrations. Those students left four letters with instructions to open the capsule in 50 years, addressed to the school principal, the Monroe County Schools superintendent, the Key West mayor and the Monroe County Public Library. Three of the four letters survived and were returned to the school for the retrieval, while one letter and the newspaper story documenting the capsule remained in the Florida Keys History Center collection.
The opening brought together the people and institutions the students had counted on half a century ago. Alongside Henriquez and Monroe County Schools Superintendent Edward Tierney were school principal Sandy McCoy, school board members, other dignitaries and Charlotte Austin Sevilla, one of the students who helped bury the capsule in 1976. The scene connected the city’s Bicentennial optimism to the Key West that exists now, where May Sands Montessori School operates as Monroe County’s first public charter school, established in 1997, and the library and history center serve as custodians of local memory rather than simply a place to check out books.
The capsule’s contents were taken to the Florida Keys History Center at the Key West Library for stabilization, conservation and possible digitization, turning a one-day unearthing into a record the public can keep visiting. The school also plans to bury a new time capsule documenting 2026, to be opened in 25 years, with retrieval letters sent to the same recipients, including the Florida Keys History Center. In a city that once turned its Bicentennial into a three-day civic party nicknamed the Big Bang, the capsule showed that Key West’s best surprise was not the fireworks but the durability of its own institutions.
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