Nevada’s 150th anniversary remembered with time capsule
Last year’s celebration of Nevada’s 150th birthday was a real hoot, but it’s over now.
And just in case you didn’t get the message, the governor himself came to Las Vegas on Friday to bury what was left of the sesquicentennial 6 feet underground.
Gov. Brian Sandoval and other dignitaries gathered in front of the Nevada State Museum at the Springs Preserve to fill a time capsule with items from the state’s 150th anniversary and lower it into a concrete vault on the property.
Former Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, who headed the Nevada 150 Commission, said the capsule will stay in the ground for the next 49 years and be opened in time for the state’s 200th birthday in 2064.
“I think some of you are going to be here. … Others I’m not so sure about,” he said to the assembled crowd at Friday’s ceremony.
The audience included Clark County Commissioners Larry Brown and Steve Sisolak, Las Vegas City Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian, former state Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, and a host of local civic and business leaders.
“I was excited about today’s event because I didn’t want the sesquicentennial year to end,” Sandoval said. “My pride for Nevada goes to the bone marrow.”
Another time capsule was placed on the capitol grounds in Carson City late last year. In it was a letter Sandoval penned to whoever holds his office in 2064.
“When I wrote that letter to the governor, I thought, ‘What do I want him or her to say about us?’ ” he said, though he declined to disclose his letter’s details. “No one’s going to know what it says but that future governor. I wanted to make it personal.”
For the Las Vegas time capsule, Sandoval contributed an autographed Nevada 150 commemorative license plate, a photo of him with his family at last year’s Nevada Day parade, and the pen — in Rebel red — he used to sign legislation during his first year in office.
Other items include a portrait of explorer John C. Fremont, a sesquicentennial belt buckle, commemorative coins, history books, DVDs, and copy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal from Nevada Day last year.
The 150 booty was placed in a rectangular metal box and lowered into the ground in front of a budding ocotillo plant on a fork in the path between the state museum and the rest of the Springs Preserve near U.S. Highway 95 and Valley View Boulevard.
“It was a great birthday,” Krolicki declared after the capsule was in place and the vault capped with a plaque. “Happy birthday, Nevada, 150 years young.”
Asked what he thought about having such potentially historic items buried just outside his front doors, museum director Dennis McBride joked that “it’s better than bodies.”
McBride said he’s helped bury a few time capsules and retrieve a few others over the years. He said they can be a treasure trove for historians, though in the case of one capsule containing some of McBride’s own journals, he’s hoping a few of the people he wrote about are long gone by the time the thing is opened.
Friday’s ceremony doubled as a thank you to those who served on the Nevada 150 Commission, sponsored its work and helped put on its various anniversary celebrations.
Both Krolicki and Sandoval said the people someday picked to organize Nevada’s 200th anniversary celebration will have tough act to follow.
“This has been an incredible year,” Krolicki said of the roughly 500 official Nevada 150 events staged during the 12 months leading up to the big day on Oct. 31, 2014.
But that future committee will have one thing going for it: They won’t have to teach people how to pronounce the name of their event.
“The folks in 50 years have it easy,” Krolicki joked. “They just have to say bicentennial, not sesquicentennial.”
Contact Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350. Follow @RefriedBrean on Twitter.
