After much speculation over the contents of a two-century-old time capsule discovered at the base of a monument at West Point, it turned out it contained nothing but dirt.
The anticlimactic reveal was live-streamed on Monday from the Robinson Auditorium at Thayer Hall of the famed U.S. military academy in New York.
“The box didn’t quite meet expectations,” said West Point archeologist Paul Hudson in the livestream. “There is a layer of silt.”
All hope was not lost, however.
“We don’t want to think that they went to all the trouble to put this box in the monument and not put anything in it,” Hudson said. “So what we’re going to do is collect all the silt. … We’ll screen it. … Potentially, it was something small and organic that may have come apart over time, but we’re just not certain.”
The discovery of the enigmatic capsule had led to high hopes of finding significant military artifacts or valuable historical documents. This was especially true since the capsule was in the base of a monument honoring Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a Polish general who designed fortifications for the Continental Army.
Moreover, the future Confederate general Robert E. Lee had served on the committee of five cadets tasked with organizing the dedication of the tribute in either 1828 or 1829.
Yet, such expectations crumbled into dust — literally.
The underwhelming revelation drew parallels to a similar event in 1986 when Geraldo Rivera’s much-hyped live opening of infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone’s vault turned out to be a dud.
Ironically, U.S. Military Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland had quipped about that failed reveal at the start of the event on August 28.
Brig. Gen. Shane Reeves, the academy’s academic dean, even humorously acknowledged that Rivera could have been a fitting guest for the day’s proceedings.
“I was told yesterday that if we had a sense of humor, we would have asked Mr. Rivera to be up here with us,” Reeves said.
While more efforts will be poured into investigating the silt and the “E.W. Bank N.Y.” stamp on the box’s underside, historical records offer no information regarding the placement of a capsule within the monument’s base.