Wilmington Bicentennial Time Capsule Committee chairperson Marjorie Swift shows off the plaque for the time capsule on Wednesday, Sept. 14 at the Preston Festival Field. The time capsule, which will be opened in 50 years, will be dedicated at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 17. Contents of the time capsule — after it is opened in 2072 — will be handed over to the Wilmington Historical Society. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

WILMINGTON — Town residents will gather underneath a white tent at Preston Festival Field at 10 this morning to dedicate a bicentennial time capsule.

The stainless steel capsule will be entombed inside a monument built from stones saved from the old Wilmington bridge. The bridge — which opened in 1935, the same year that President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway — stood for 80 years over the West Branch of the AuSable River on state Route 86. It was dismantled in 2015 and replaced with the current bridge.

“It has really great historic value to it,” Bicentennial Time Capsule Committee chair Marjorie Swift said of the monument.

Kevin Rowe and his crew from Rowe’s Contracting in Wilmington poured a concrete slab on Aug. 22 and built the monument on top of it this past week, starting on Tuesday.

Items will be placed inside the stainless steel capsule, which will be entombed in the stone monument, and it will be opened in 50 years — on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2072.

Some of the children in this community celebrated their town’s bicentennial by writing letters to themselves for the time capsule.

“That was the exciting thing,” Swift said. “When I presented this to some of the children, they immediately did their math in their head and said, ‘Oh, I’ll be 61 years old … I’ll still be here hopefully.’ … I think that was my hope, that people would still be alive that could remember when this was put in and be here.”

The letters tell stories about the children’s lives and predictions for the future.

Some letters are sealed shut.

“That needs to be kept private until 50 years from now,” Swift said.

And some are not.

“A couple I did read,” Swift said, “and they told about themselves and what they like to do now, what their life was like.”

When the time capsule is opened, Swift said she hopes the grown-up children will reflect back and see how wonderful their life was in 2022 “and that Wilmington is still a wonderful town with great people.”

In addition to letters from children, there will be historical items from the Wolfe family (her late husband’s family), who sponsored most of the project; artwork from local artists, such as Stevie Capozio, who died on Aug. 25 at the age of 101; newspaper articles; books; a letter from town Supervisor Roy Holzer to the supervisor in 2072; items from Whiteface Mountain Ski Center, Santa’s Workshop and various restaurants in town; history leading up to present day from the Whiteface Community United Methodist Church; and more.

“We also will be highlighting the pandemic in the capsule, with test kits, masks, photos of the emptiness around the world,” Swift said.

Five members of the time capsule committee chose the contents: Swift, Stacey Flanagan, Laurie George, Rarilee Conway and Sara Hobday.

The contents will become property of the Wilmington Historical Society after the time capsule is opened.

The inspiration for Wilmington’s time capsule was sparked last November when Swift was attending a holiday ceremony at a park in the village of Warwick, just west of Harriman State Park in New York’s Hudson River Valley.

“They had a lighting in the park for Christmas,” she said. “I turned around and realized I was standing next to this stone monument. And I looked at it, and there was a plaque on top and it was a time capsule. I snapped a picture, and I thought, ‘Oh, how cool.'”

Warwick’s latest 50-year time capsule was sealed shut in 2017 during the village’s sesquicentennial celebration. That was shortly after the first time capsule was opened in August 2017, 50 years after it was placed in a monument during the village’s centennial celebration in 1967.

“With our bicentennial coming up, I thought this would be really neat to do,” Swift said.

In Warwick in 2017, a board of trustees — filled with children appointed during the village’s 1967 celebration — were in charge of opening the village’s time capsule. They appointed a new board of trustees to open the latest time capsule in 2067 — the village’s bicentennial.

On Wednesday — as Rowe was building the stone monument — Swift showed off the metal plaque she ordered from Adirondack Awards in Lake Placid:

“Wilmington Bicentennial TIME CAPSULE sealed September 17, 2022 to be opened September 17, 2072. Sponsored by the Wolfe Family Descendants Town of Wilmington & Friends.”

Wilmington’s bicentennial celebration continues through the end of 2022.