PORT ANGELES — Local history came to light at Stevens Middle School when students dug through the contents of a large black plastic trash bag buried for more than three decades and uncovered by chance during construction on campus.
Inside the makeshift time capsule buried by Allen “Mr. Guss” Gustafson’s sixth-grade class on Nov. 9, 1989, were more plastic bags, their contents slightly damp and carrying a musty odor.
The items revealed what students at the time thought mattered, offering nine Associated Student Body officers a glimpse into what earlier teens considered worth saving and saying.
There was a phone book, a Reader’s Digest, a TV Guide, Polaroid photos, a textbook and a 1989 school annual.
The handwriting in the letters they wrote to those who came after them — bundled and held together with rusty staples — drew admiration.
“It’s better than mine,” said Noah Larsen, a 12-year-old seventh-grader. “And they were in the sixth grade.”
Among the predictions about what the world be like in 100 years were pencil drawings of aerodynamic automobiles and motorcycles.
Bryson Rodriquez, a 13-year-old eighth-grader, read from an essay that imagined a future where “everyone would use computers” and students would “stick your homework in your pocket on a disk.”
Larsen, 14-year-old eighth-grader Linda Venuti and 13-year-old seventh-grader Airabella Rogers flipped through a visitor guide, calling out the names of businesses they recognized — the Red Lion, the All View Motel — and others that had long since disappeared, like Aggies Motel and The 3 Crabs.
There was recognition that while some things had changed — those funny hairstyles! — others like the wooden bleachers in a black-and-white class photo were the same ones they sat on during assemblies.
In a way, the time capsule was both late and early — buried with the idea of being opened in 2089, but retrieved sooner than planned because of its poor condition. Two undamaged time capsules buried in the same spot were left in place.
As the students talked, conversation turned to what they might include in a time capsule when the new school — to be named Hurricane Ridge Middle School — opens in 2028.
Ideas came quickly: a COVID mask, a bag of pennies, music.
The challenge is that so much of students’ lives now exists digitally — texts, photos, homework and friendships stored in the cloud instead of on paper.
The discovery of the time capsule, said Nolan Duce, the district’s director of capital projects, underscores how easily they can be lost.
It wasn’t noted on any architectural drawings and was found purely by accident during utility work in August by a contractor — one of the many local businesses the district has hired to work on the project.
Recognizing what it might be, he removed it instead of discarding it.
“That’s a local contractor,” Duce said. “A lot of those guys have kids who go to Stevens.”
It’s important that when time capsules are buried, a school’s maintenance department be involved, Duce said, so the location can be documented.
Without an official record or clear marker, time capsules can be covered over during landscaping, buried deeper during construction or unknowingly hauled away during earthwork.
A time capsule buried next to a flagpole at Jefferson Elementary may have been lost when the building was largely demolished and then rebuilt in the early 2000s.
“It reinforces the importance of involving maintenance and putting it on the prints,” Duce said. “If it’s not called out, time is money and contractors work fast. If they don’t see it, it goes in the back of a dump truck.”
There may be time capsules at Franklin Elementary and Port Angeles High School — which also are being replaced with new buildings — but if they are, the district doesn’t know where.
Duce said if someone knows the locations, they should come forward quickly before construction begins.
For the students at Stevens, though, the lesson was simpler and more immediate.
History doesn’t always come in a book or on a screen. Sometimes, it’s a trash bag pulled from the dirt — a reminder of that what other kids leave behind today will one day be someone else’s window into the past.
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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.
