Museum staff, volunteers work to properly save and display artifacts from time capsule
By Ben Cox
Photos/Ben Cox
A time capsule was buried in 1975 to mark Jacksonville’s sesquicentennial activities. In March, it was unearthed.
The exhumation wasn’t publicized because of the use of heavy equipment and because workers weren’t quite sure what challenges may arise. Problems didn’t really pop up while getting the items out of the vault, which was a coffin, or with the small crowd that did gather during the unearthing. The problems have come with preserving and displaying the artifacts inside.
Tori Kolanowski, the new manager of the Jacksonville Area Museum, has been overseeing a project to remove mold and mildew from many of the items that were encased in the time capsule. Kolanowski says through the process of using an ozone machine in a sealed off area of the museum, they have been slowly killing mold that was growing on many of the items.
“We kind of put them in a little sealed off area, pump those chemicals through for about two to three days and then take everything off and start it all over again. What’s really kind of interesting is the chemical itself doesn’t permeate through anything, so it’s like all these books and things like that, we actually have to hand turn every single page and do the process over and over again to make sure it’s safe for the public to see as well as to handle,” She said. “Luckily, not everything was molded because some things were packaged in bags or wrapped in foil, and so those items were actually pretty okay. It’s a lot of the just kind of free floating items that were affected.”
Kolanowski and several museum volunteers have taken on the preservation process with both chemicals and temperature control to get the artifacts in proper condition.
Kolanowski, who recently started her position with Jacksonville Area Museum, says this is the first major project she’s undertaken, “This whole job process is actually my first real career in the history field, but it is something I’ve wanted to do my whole life. So it’s been kind of an honor and a pleasure to be here while the renovations are happening at the museum, and then with the handling of the time capsule.”
Some of the time capsule items that didn’t have issues went on display at the museum on July 5. The museum is rotating the items that are displayed for the public because of the sheer volume of artifacts.
Kolanowski says the museum is handling between 100-150 items from the time capsule alone. The display in the front of the museum is currently housing between 20-30 artifacts at a time. “We’ve got quite a bit of an undertaking for rotating everything,” Kolanowski says, “because our goal is that we want to have a majority of the objects to have time to be out there [on display]. What we’ve come up with is about every two to three weeks we’ll pick another 20 to 30 objects and put them out.” The other goal behind the rotation is to keep having people come back to visit the museum throughout the summer.
In the meantime, the Jacksonville Area Convention & Visitors Bureau along with Rotary Club of Jacksonville have begun reuniting letters that were in the vault to their intended recipients.
In 1975, for $10, people were able to write a letter and address it to family members or others and have it sealed in the time capsule, with the promise that it would be delivered when the capsule was opened. Dozens have already been giving to recipients as the city continues to celebrate its 200th birthday.
To see if you have a letter addressed to you or an organization to which you belong, visit https://jacksonvilleil.org/2025/06/time-capsule-letters-from-1825-ready-for-pickup/.
The Jacksonville Area Museum is open Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., and Sundays from 1-4 p.m. It is located at the Old Post Office, 301 East State St.
