---
title: "Burbank opened a 50-year-old time capsule, and found a mystery"
description: "In 1976, Burbank sealed a time capsule with a plan to open it, and add a new one, every 25 years for a century. When the library finally opened it this summer, the 1970s treasures were all there. The mystery was what wasn't: the capsule that should have been made in 2001 never existed."
category: "Los Angeles"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/los-angeles
author: "Brandon Cole"
published: 2026-07-17T14:02:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-17T14:02:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/burbank-opened-a-50-year-old-time-capsule-and-found-a-mystery
tags: ["burbank", "time capsule", "library", "local history", "los angeles"]
---
# Burbank opened a 50-year-old time capsule, and found a mystery

In 1976, Burbank sealed a time capsule with a plan to open it, and add a new one, every 25 years for a century. When the library finally opened it this summer, the 1970s treasures were all there. The mystery was what wasn't: the capsule that should have been made in 2001 never existed.

It was supposed to be a tidy century-long tradition. Instead, Burbank has a small civic whodunit on its hands.

## The plan

When the city's Bicentennial Committee buried a time capsule in 1976, the idea was elegant: open it every 25 years, look back, add a fresh capsule capturing the present, and keep the chain going for a hundred years. A neat way to hand the city, decade by decade, to its future self.

## What they found

When Burbank Public Library staff [opened the original capsule this summer, right on schedule for its 50th anniversary](https://laist.com/news/los-angeles-activities/empty-time-capsule-burbank-public-library-mystery), the contents were just as promised: a snapshot of mid-1970s Burbank, including photographs of the Bicentennial Committee, old utility rate books, telephone directories and restaurant menus. A little window onto the city as it was.

## The missing link

The problem was the next link in the chain. The 2001 capsule, the one that should have been assembled and sealed at the 25-year mark, was simply never made. "It's a fun little mystery we got going on," a library staff member told [LAist](https://laist.com/news/los-angeles-activities/empty-time-capsule-burbank-public-library-mystery), offering one gentle theory: that whoever was tasked with the milestone in 2001 may have thought their job was only to peek at the 1976 contents, not to add a new capsule of their own. A quarter-century of Burbank, in other words, may have gone unrecorded because of a misread instruction.

## What happens next

Rather than dwell on the gap, the library is picking the tradition back up. Staff are assembling a 2026 capsule to stand in for the missing one, and are inviting the community to contribute small, non-perishable items that say something about Burbank today, with a window to donate through the early fall. The capsules are to be kept in storage until the city's new central library opens later in the decade, when they may go on fuller display, and the library plans to show off the 1976 finds in the meantime.

The 2001 mystery may never be solved. But there is a nice lesson tucked inside it, the kind a library would appreciate: a plan is only as good as the note that reminds the next person to carry it out. Burbank, at least, has resolved to write that note again.

## Sources

- [An empty time capsule leaves Burbank Public Library with a mystery from the past](https://laist.com/news/los-angeles-activities/empty-time-capsule-burbank-public-library-mystery)