Time Capsule Eludes Searchers

FORT WORTH -- A 100-year-old time capsule was supposed to be retrieved from Cowtown Coliseum on Wednesday.

But after chipping away at bricks and concrete for about three hours, workers couldn't find it.

"It's disappointing," said Billy Joe Gabriel, a Fort Worth Stockyards historian who is writing two books that will commemorate the coliseum's 100-year anniversary. "But I believe it's there because there are too many reports of it being put there and no reports of it ever being taken out." The exterior of the capsule is believed to be a small steel box that was entombed near the cornerstone in 1907. An X-ray from the Fort Worth Fire Department bomb squad revealed that a small, square box could possibly be lodged in the southeast corner -- in the coliseum's gift shop.

But when officials failed to find the capsule and couldn't get help from a busy bomb squad, they rebooked the Fire Department for more X-rays on Friday.

The coliseum, on Exchange Avenue in the Stockyards, is billed as the home of the first indoor rodeo in 1918.
Star-Telegram.com | 09/06/2007 | Time capsule eludes searchers