PORT ANGELES — A two-drawer, roughly knee-high cabinet preserving how the city of Port Angeles spent its 150th birthday year will be installed during a ceremony at the historic Clallam County Courthouse on Saturday.
The celebration — the final event planned by the city’s Sesquicentennial Committee, will run from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. at the historic Clallam County Courthouse at Lincoln and Fourth streets, Port Angeles Mayor Cherie Kidd said.
Visitors will be able to use the original Lincoln Street entrance to the 1914 brick courthouse, all of which will be open as part of the ceremony, Kidd said.
The time capsule will be encased in a custom cherry-wood cabinet built by Westport Shipyard’s cabinet shop staff, the mayor said.
It will feature a sesquicentennial logo designed by Johnnie Montice from Captain T’s Gift Shoppe and Custom Stuff in Port Angeles.
“It will be on display at the courthouse for the next 50 years,” Kidd said. “The cherry wood will deepen and become more beautiful as it ages.”
Kidd and Alice Donnelly, her fellow Sesquicentennial Committee co-chair, will host the event.
Donnelly, also the chair of the five-person subcommittee that collected the items that will be placed in the 25-inch-high time capsule, said the hundreds of separate items were chosen to give those who open the capsule in 2062 — Port Angeles’ bicentennial — a glimpse of what life was like in Port Angeles in 2012.
[The capsule] is not huge, but boy is it ever going to be packed,” Donnelly said.
Donnelly said the committee has spent the past three months collecting as many examples of 2012 Port Angeles as possible.
Items include the city’s 2012 budget, shoulder badges from the Port Angeles Police Department and a 2012 annual report from the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office.
The capsule also will contain more whimsical items, as Donnelly put it, including a 2011 model cellphone, a specially designed sesquicentennial root beer bottle from Port Angeles’ own Bedford’s Root Beer, and essays and drawings from Port Angeles elementary students in which they describe what they think the city will look like in 50 years.
“If there’s anything we’re going to put in that, I’m really excited by, it’s from the schools,” Connelly said.
“It’s what the kids have done.”
Kidd said the Sesquicentennial Committee chose the time capsule ceremony as the last committee-sponsored event of Port Angeles’ 150th year so the celebration of the city’s history extends beyond 2012.
Saturday’s ceremony will start with a presentation of colors and flag salute lead by Boy Scout Troop 1192, talks by Kidd and Clallam County Commissioner Mike Doherty, and free refreshments for all attendees.
“We’re ending the year with the time capsule so in fact the year doesn’t end,” Kidd said.
“We’re just passing the baton, if you will, to the next generation.”
Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.
