The Juneau Time Capsule located inside the Hurff Ackerman Saunders Federal Building turns 30 this year and 31 family members of the man who started it all visited to celebrate on Friday.
The chair of the 1994 project committee was Michael Orelove, a longtime Juneau resident known for his community projects including the Map Made of 50,000 Nails on the Juneau Dock, the Twin Lakes Planet Walk and the Juneau Sundial.
Jonathon Turlove, Michael Orelove’s son, said it’s the first celebration of Juneau’s 100-year time capsule that took place without his father.
Orelove passed away in 2023. Turlove said it’s like he’s still with them through the items he left sealed inside back in 1994.
Juneau families could pay $100 to participate in the project’s fundraising and store a box of their belongings inside the time capsule. They pass the keys down through generations. The time capsule won’t be opened until 2094.
Gary Gillette was a historic preservation planner with the City and Borough of Juneau in 1994. He helped bring the community of Juneau together for the project. He said the manager of the federal building at the time made it easy to integrate the time capsule as the building was undergoing renovations.
The 1994 federal building manager helped in another way — he gifted a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey to the future building manager in 2094.
Gillette said the time capsule being community driven is “true to Michael’s character” — they worked together to include Juneau’s restaurant menus, personal books and a roll of newspaper from the Juneau Empire signed by community members.
A chainsaw was donated by local logger Paul Hamby with a note to a future logger giving directions to the clearcut it was last used on.
When the time capsule is opened, the trees planted between Juneau and Sitka should be ready to harvest again, Turlove said.
The capsule also contains hundreds of letters written by Juneau schoolchildren addressed to the schoolchildren of 2094.
The letters from students have already aged — they reference Floyd Dryden Middle School and Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School which are combining this school year to create Thunder Mountain Middle School.
A letter from a Juneau student in 1994 explains the different schools in Juneau at the time, popular movies, and popular fashion. Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School and Floyd Dryden Middle School have since been combined into Thunder Mountain Middle School. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)
Michael Orelove became the chair of the committee because he had already started personal time capsules. Turlove said his family continues this tradition today.
“He has really left a legacy,” he said. “The interesting thing for me with the time boxes is starting in 1980, he went to his 20th high school reunion. And he kind of realized, ‘Oh, 20 years is a really good amount of time.’ And he came up with this idea of making our own family time capsules.”
“So starting in 1980, every year, he would seal up a big cardboard box with just our own stuff for 20 years. And so starting in the year 2000, we would open them up. We’ve continued on the tradition, my wife and I, even though my dad’s gone.”
Outside of his personal time capsules and community projects, Orelove also sent out what he called “Michael mail” to his family relating to their interests. Fred Orelove, Michael’s cousin, was visiting Juneau from Richmond, Virginia for the 30th time capsule celebration.
“The last Michael mail we all got about a week, a week and a half after he died,” he said. “He mailed it a day or two before he died. And by the time we got it, we’d all learned he’d been dead for a number of days. And one of the things in there I remember was the description of our two cousins who they killed in the Holocaust. It was classic Michael. In other words, he informed. He educated. He connected.”
“Woody” the mannequin was donated by Nugget Alaskan Outfitter in 1994 to give the time capsule a human feel. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)
Unlike most time capsules which consist of a small box buried in the ground, the Juneau capsule is the only known time capsule in the world that is an entire small room with large windows that allow visitors to view the contents as they age over time.
“You can see it change before your eyes,” Turlove said. “A lot of time capsules are forgotten when they get buried. Everything is 30 years old. It’s already sort of dated and imagine when it’s 50 years old or 80 years old. I think it is sort of an effort to have people who are alive now actually enjoy it. It’s not just a gift to the future, but to everybody now.”
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz.garrett@juneauempire.com or (907) 723-9356.
Inside the time capsule shows where the Mendenhall Glacier was in 1994. A study published this year found the Juneau Icefield is melting twice as quickly as it did before 2010 and nearly five times as fast as the 1980s. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)
Jonathon Turlove, son of Michael Orelove, points at the 1994 Juneau Time Capsule inside the Federal Building on Friday for the 30th anniversary celebration. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)
