On April 26, 2016, around 100 people gathered on the Court House lawn to witness the unearthing of a 50-year-old piece of history.

In 1966, the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Chamber of Commerce buried a time capsule that was to be dug up and opened in 2016.

The group of onlookers gathered around the stairs of the Court House as Frank Tamberrino & Mike Garber opened the time capsule. Ed Seidel, who was present when the time capsule was buried 50 years ago, peeked into the box and started laughing as he saw everything that he had helped bury in 1966.

The contents of the capsule were unloaded, examined, and displayed to the crowd. The contents included letters; information on the chamber, county, local colleges (Madison, Bridgewater, and Eastern Mennonite College at the time), and the city; a local recipe book; newspapers; a 1965 yearbook from Eastern Mennonite College; a Polaris missile computer case; canned chicken and turkey made locally by the Rockingham Poultry Company; a model of a 1966 Plymouth car… and much more…

We do not live in the past but from it may we derive many lessons for the future.

– quote from a letter found in the time capsule

If you didn’t get a chance to see the items or if you want to give your two cents about what should go into the next time capsule, stop by the Chamber offices.

Students at the Massanutten Technical Center are working on building the next capsule which will be buried in June or July.