Buried treasure difficult to find

By JEFF WILSON

The Associated Press

FILLMORE, Calif. --- The 1970s must have been very good to the people of Fillmore because no can seem to remember where the town's time capsule is buried.

"We're pretty certain we can figure it out if we find the right people and do enough digging," said Deputy City Clerk Steve McClary, who has placed advertisements in newspapers in hopes someone will remember.

The collection of cultural artifacts was buried so generations in the year 2000 could see what the citrus-and-avocado town of 17,000 people 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles was like during the disco era.

People generally recall the capsule was put in the ground someplace in the city sometime in the '70s. What is inside is also a mystery, though McClary said old-timers remember there were photographs.

With the millennium approaching, many communities and organizations around the country are creating time capsules or unearthing old ones. The problem is, many forget where they put the capsules.

According to the International Time Capsule Society in Atlanta, most of the world's 10,000 time capsules are gone and forgotten.

"If it's buried, it's out of sight, out of mind," said Paul Hudson, founder of the decade-old organization at Oglethorpe University.

The society even has a "Nine Most Wanted" time capsules list.

No. 3 on the list are the city of Corona's time capsules. In 1986, workers in the community 40 miles from Los Angeles tore up the concrete around the Civic Center to find 17 time capsules dating from the 1930s. They never were found.

Another entry, No. 4, is the capsule buried in 1983 by the cast of television's "M*A*S*H." It was filled with props and costumes and planted in what was a 20th Century Fox studio parking lot. Nobody seems to know its location, but the current theory is it is beneath the Century City Marriott Hotel.

And the problem of lost time capsules could get worse.

"America is time capsule crazy right now. Boy Scout troops, schools, hospitals, everyone's burying them," Hudson said. "With the millennium, they think they can write themselves into history."

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