CARBONDALE, Ill. (HEARTLAND NEWS) - Long after today’s smartphones have become museum pieces and today’s headlines have faded into history, a small aluminum chest buried outside Carbondale’s new Southern Illinois Multimodal Station will wait for another generation to discover it.
City leaders, residents, educators, first responders, business owners and community organizations gathered Thursday afternoon to celebrate the burial of a 100-year time capsule, preserving a snapshot of life in Carbondale in 2026.
Before the ceremony, attendees filled the station’s waiting room, where they could flip through a book documenting everything placed inside the capsule — photographs, newspapers, school yearbooks, written histories and other items selected to represent the community during America’s 250th anniversary year.
Several speakers reflected on the significance of the project before Mayor Carolin Harvey read a proclamation marking the occasion. She challenged those in attendance to imagine what life might look like a century from now and what future residents might think as they uncovered the capsule.
“I think they’ll look at it as like we do at stuff we look at now,” Harvey said. “They’ll think, ‘Oh, what in the world is this?’ But I think it’s just good to have those remembrances.”
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Harvey said the project is both a celebration of the city’s present and an investment in its future.
“We have to preserve our past, otherwise our future... we don’t know where we came from,” she said. “It’s a way of preserving what has already happened and remembering those who have paved the way for so many of us.”
The aluminum capsule was lowered into a concrete vault at the base of the flagpole outside the station, near the corner of South Illinois Avenue and East Walnut Street. Afterward, as many attendees as could fit gathered for a group photograph with the multimodal station serving as the backdrop.
Eva Fisher, public relations officer for the City of Carbondale, said the capsule reflects far more than city government.
Contributions came from local businesses, nonprofit organizations, Carbondale schools, Southern Illinois University and community partners across the city.
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“I hope that they see what a collaborative community Carbondale is,” Fisher said. “Between the businesses, between the schools, between the nonprofits, you see the work within this time capsule that people put in to really uplift each other in this community.”
Fisher said planning for the capsule actually began before construction of the station was complete.
“The project manager for the SIMMS, Mark Bollmann, had this idea before the building was ever built,” she said. “It was worked into the design to have the space open for a time capsule.”
She said the timing made the ceremony especially meaningful, coming as the nation marks its 250th anniversary and as the multimodal station moves closer to opening.
The capsule is scheduled to remain sealed until July 2, 2126, when a future generation of Carbondale residents will open it and discover what life looked like one hundred years earlier.
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