Farmington museum launches time capsule for city’s 125th anniversary
Children, yearbooks and anniversary memorabilia were sealed behind glass at the Farmington Museum, where residents helped decide what 2026 says about the city.
The Farmington Museum sealed a time capsule behind glass on Nov. 12, turning the city’s 125th anniversary into a test of what, and who, will represent Farmington for the next 25 years. The capsule will stay on display in the museum instead of being buried, making the countdown part of the exhibit itself.
Farmington is marking 125 years since it was formally incorporated on July 15, 1901, as a yearlong quasquicentennial celebration. City leaders have also pointed to a deeper timeline, saying Farmington’s history stretches back more than 2,000 years, which gives the capsule a narrow but deliberate place in a much longer story.
The project was built around children and local participation. Nathan Augustine, who became director of the Farmington Museum System in 2025 after more than 30 years in museum leadership, curation and cultural engagement, revamped the alcove area near the classrooms to make room for the installation. The museum invited young participants to write letters to their future selves and design a Blast to the Future mission patch, a theme Augustine tied to Back to the Future and the Artemis moon landings.
Along with the children’s materials, the capsule is set to include yearbooks from local high schools and memorabilia from Farmington’s 125th anniversary. That mix says as much about the city’s present as its past: school memories, civic branding and children’s voices will sit side by side inside a display meant to be reopened in 25 years.
Keeping the capsule visible rather than hidden is the point. By placing it behind glass at the museum, organizers turned preservation into a public reminder of how a city defines itself in real time, not just after the fact. The deeper question now is which San Juan County stories made it into the capsule, which ones were left out, and what Farmington wanted the next generation to understand about the city at this moment.
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