Yuma County time capsule buried

Memorabilia representing the memories, hopes and dreams of the residents of Yuma County were entombed in the Centennial Heritage Area Friday evening.

The items were placed inside a time capsule during the kickoff of the Yuma County Centennial Celebration, which will be held over the coming days. The capsule, located behind the Yuma Main Library, will not be opened until 2112.

Fifteen individual aluminum canisters, each representing various government entities, private companies and school districts from around Yuma County, were stuffed with photos, smartphones, newspapers and other trinkets representing everyday life in 2012.

A bottle of brandy was also placed inside as a joking reference to another bottle of brandy buried in a separate time capsule in Somerton in 1985 but mysteriously missing when that container was opened in 2010.

The aluminum containers were placed inside of a larger cement chamber that was sealed with a manhole cover decorated with the Yuma County-Arizona Centennial logo.

When the cylinders are unearthed in a century during Arizona's bicentennial celebration, event organizers hope the items hidden inside will provide future inhabitants a glimpse into Yuma's history.

“It is a real good cross-section of the county as a whole, and that was the goal,” said Robert Pickels, Yuma County administrator.

“We were trying to reach across the entire 5,500 square miles of the county and leave no one excluded from this event. We really wanted this to truly be a county event, and it was.”

In addition, a photo of those who found the seven glass diamonds hidden during the Great Yuma County Diamond Hunt was placed in a cylinder. If all goes well, their progeny will return with the diamonds to the site of the time capsule when it is opened in a century.

The Yuma County employees who designed the time capsule took careful measures to ensure the contents in the aluminum containers will survive for the next 100 years by keeping any moisture out.

“There's a lot of precautions we had to take,” Pickels said. “We had to seal them up with wax, but there was also a preservative agent that had to go in. We had to put Styrofoam agent in there to make sure that if anything does seep through, it would be protected.”

Chris McDaniel can be reached at cmcdaniel@yumasun.com or 539-6849.