Time capsules: the messages the city sent itself

1960 — 2025

Buried in 1960, addressed to 1994: Fort Wayne's best-documented capsule was a broadcaster's. On March 31, 1960 — the thirty-fifth anniversary of its sign-on — WOWO buried a time capsule in East Swinney Park and marked the spot with a plaque whose inscription the Allen County–Fort Wayne Historical Society printed in its 1963 guide: the capsule "contains tangible evidence of the mo'res in the Tri-State area during 1960 and before. To be opened October 22, 1994 — the 200th Anniversary of Fort Wayne." The station's own history adds that the box held mementos of life as it was that day and predictions of what life might be like when it was opened. The plaque outlasted its site: the Historical Marker Database, in its October 2025 revision, records the marker as missing from its original location and housed in WOWO's offices on Maples Road, with plans to relocate it by the end of 2025 — the capsule's marker, itself, now an artifact in need of a home.

The parish capsule came back up the hard way. When St. Hyacinth Catholic Church was built on Holton Avenue, the cornerstone laid on August 30, 1953 received a copper time capsule of newspapers of that day, parish records, rosaries and medals. The parish closed in 1995, and on July 23, 2025 — the church awaiting demolition to give Vincent Village room to expand — the vicar general opened the weathered box before the diocesan archivist and clergy, and the newspapers inside were still dated August 30, 1953. The sister-city capsule is still in the ground: on May 11, 2002, citizens of Takaoka, Japan, and Fort Wayne buried a capsule on East Main Street near Barr, containing articles of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the alliance established in 1977, to be opened on the occasion of the fiftieth. Even commerce kept the custom — Georgetown Square buried a capsule in June 1993 for its twenty-fifth anniversary and opened it at its fiftieth, displaying the contents, as WOWO's newsroom reported. No inventory of a courthouse cornerstone box was found in the sources reached for this section; the documented capsules are these.

Sources:

1. Historical Marker Database, "WOWO Time Capsule" (revised October 20, 2025) — the inscription, the Swinney Park site, and the marker's present keeping at WOWO.
2. Allen County–Fort Wayne Historical Society, guide to Fort Wayne (revised through June 1963) — the plaque text as printed two years after the burial; The History of WOWO (historyofwowo.com) — the mementos and predictions.
3. Today's Catholic, "A Glimpse into the Past: St. Hyacinth Time Capsule Opened" (August 5, 2025) — the 1953 cornerstone, the July 23, 2025 opening, and the contents.
4. Historical Marker Database — the Takaoka capsule marker, East Main Street; WOWO news (Kayla Blakeslee) — the Georgetown Square capsule of 1993 and its opening.