Centennial Car Tomb

On June 15, 1957, a new gold and white 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Coupe was buried in a time capsule at the foot of the Tulsa County Courthouse to commemorate Oklahoma’s 50 years of statehood. Fifty years later, on June 15, 2007, the car will be unearthed, as planned, as part of the state’s centennial celebration. How well it has been preserved, no one knows.

Why the Belvedere? At the time, event chairman Lewis Roberts Jr. explained that the car was “an advanced product of American industrial ingenuity with the kind of lasting appeal that will still be in style 50 years from now.”

What else did the citizens of Tulsa in 1957 think that people in 2007 should remember? Well, the capsule also contains a case of Schlitz beer, gasoline and oil for the car (in case those things were obsolete a half-century later), the contents of a purse (including bobby pins, a bottle of tranquilizers, cigarettes and an unpaid parking ticket), and historical and state data.
Visit www.buriedcar.com for more information, or to share your memories of 1957.

Photos Courtesy of the Oklahoma Centennial Commission

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