PHOTO VIA CITY OF ORLANDO
A time capsule buried by the Kiwanis Club of Orlando during the U.S. Bicentennial was opened this morning at City Hall, and its contents had been unseen since 1976.
Mayor Buddy Dyer, commissioners Patty Sheehan and Shan Rose, and Kiwanis Club President Matt Kelly were on hand to unseal the capsule in the City Hall Rotunda at 10:30 a.m. this morning. The capsule held newspapers, photographs, publications (including a copy of Orlando Magazine‘s predecessor Orlandoland), and memorabilia selected by community leaders to represent Orlando as it stood half a century ago. When the box was originally buried at Lake Eola Park, the city had roughly 116,000 residents, which is about one-third of today’s population. Carl Langford, who served as mayor from 1967 to 1980, was in office at the time of the burial.
The 1976 snapshot inside shares that “Rocky” was the highest-grossing film in the country, “Silly Love Songs” topped the music charts, McCoy Jetport had just been renamed Orlando International Airport, and the city had recently expanded what is now Camping World Stadium (what do you think they’d say if we told them it’s still being worked on?).
At some point during construction work at Lake Eola Park, the city says it was carefully unearthed and relocated to a climate-controlled warehouse, where it has remained sealed ever since. In 2025, staff from the Orange County Regional History Center visited the capsule at the warehouse and, according to the mayor’s office, instructed them on best practices for when it would inevitably be reopened.
The Kiwanis Club of Orlando (Website), which has operated in the city since 1921, organized the original Bicentennial burial.
The City is evaluating the items to see if any of them are in good enough shape to be exhibited publicly.
