Loveland Seals State Time Capsule After Vail Tour

Aspen —Make no mistake: Charles Lammers didn’t plan for this to get big. He just wanted a box in Loveland.

Now that box is the state’s most visible artifact of 2026. It has just finished its final leg in Vail, wrapping up a frantic statewide tour that defied wildfires and bad scheduling. The Colorado Time Capsule is back home. It will be sealed in September.

Lammers, destination marketing manager for Visit Loveland, started with a countywide idea. He suggested the capsule offhandedly. The result is what Loveland calls “Colorado’s Largest Time Capsule.” It stands in the bed of a white pickup truck. It is 3 feet wide and 7 feet long.

The plan was simple: hit every county in two weeks. The reality was messier. Wildfires forced a pivot. Lammers condensed the trip to one week. He hit 24 stops. Vail was the last stop, reached on August 14.

Gabriela Avila wrote a letter to the future there. So did residents and tourists from across the state. The goal, Lammers said, is a snapshot of life in 2026. He wants the residents to provide it.

The capsule itself is built for longevity. It’s made from high-density polyethylene water pipe. Lammers says it has a shelf life underground of 70 to 100 years. That covers the half-century required for its reopening in 2076.

That date matters. 2076 marks Colorado’s 200th birthday and America’s 300th. The capsule is designed not to leak. It travels with mylar bags and 5 pounds of oxygen absorber. Items are vacuum-sealed before burial at the Ranch Events Complex in Loveland.

The contents reflect a state in transition. Lammers has received business cards, government pins, and a favorite Rockies T-shirt. But the personal submissions are what stand out.

“People have gotten really personal with their submissions,” Lammers said. “It’s become something that we never anticipated it would be.”

Participants could write letters to themselves. The prompt was specific: “What would you like future generations of Americans and Coloradans to know?”

The materials matter for preservation. The paper is sugarcane-based. It doesn’t break down easily. The pens are pigment-based. They sit on the paper rather than staining it, preventing long-term damage.

One letter from a woman in Florida detailed how her trip to Colorado changed her life. Lammers noted many others followed similar threads of personal connection.

Mail-in submissions continue until September 8. In-person drops are accepted until September 10.

Locals in Vail got their turn to contribute during the stop on August 14. The capsule is now back in Loveland, waiting for those final submissions.

The short version: This isn’t just a box in the ground. It’s a record of who we were when the state turned 150. The construction ensures it survives the next half-century. The contents ensure we aren’t forgotten.

Lammers is confident in the engineering. He’s less predictable about what people will choose to save. A Rockies shirt? Fine. A letter from Florida? Also fine. The capsule holds them all.

The sealing happens in the fall. The burial follows shortly after. Then, silence for 50 years.

No one knows yet which specific item will catch the eye of a reader in 2076. That’s the point. The capsule waits.