College of Southern Nevada will open capsule in good time

In 1974, what was then called Clark County Community College was a brand-new institution with just a few hundred students.

Its first building went up that year at a cost of $1.9 million near the corner of Cheyenne Avenue and Pecos Road in North Las Vegas.

The blueprints for that building are faded and frayed around the edges, stored in a room at what is now called the College of Southern Nevada.

Those blueprints included a time capsule constructed of copper and about the size of a shoe box. The box was to be welded shut, placed in a special spot, and reopened at some time in the far away future.

And then?

Then everyone forgot about the time capsule.

Administrations changed, professors and students came and went, and the college grew to more than 40,000 students and three campuses. The time capsule was moved at least once during a renovation, it seems.

But there it sat, forgotten.

Until one day a few months ago. Sandy Miller was getting nostalgic. So, out of the blue, she asked her friend Warren Hioki what happened to that time capsule at the community college.

Miller is the wife of Bob Miller, who was Nevada's governor from 1989 to 1999. She thought she was at the dedication when the time capsule was put in place, though she thought it was in 1964, which would have been 10 years before the building was constructed.

She later discovered she was remembering a different time capsule in North Las Vegas.

"It's just one of those little things that stick with you," Miller explained.

She said she's had a thing for time capsules for some time. She remembers renovating the Governor's Mansion in the 1990s and placing one there, under the stairs.

She sits on an education committee with Hioki, who is an executive at the community college. He's been there since 1994.

But he told her he'd never heard a thing about a time capsule.

So, he asked around.

"Nobody knew what I was talking about," Hioki said.

He ended up asking his boss, Darren Divine, the vice president of academic affairs, who's only been at CSN a few years.

Divine had never heard of it, either.

They asked around some more. Longtime professors, other executives. They got nothing.

Until they asked Patty Charlton, the vice president for finance and facilities.

Charlton just happened to have been a student at the college in the mid-1980s. She vaguely remembered seeing a sign or a plaque or something that made her realize there was, indeed, a time capsule at the college.

So that was the first confirmation that they were on to something.

The next step was to approach Sherri Payne, the associate vice president for facilities management, who retrieved the blueprints.

"And we found it," Payne said.

They went through more blueprints.

They found plans for the renovations. They were pretty sure they figured out where the time capsule was: behind a plaque in the wall near the Cheyenne campus' main entrance.

The plaque didn't say anything other than the date the building was opened, though. Nothing about a time capsule.

So they weren't sure if the time capsule was really there. Nobody left a Post-it note or anything.

What everyone was most afraid of: They'd make a big fuss of everything, remove the plaque, and find nothing but spiderwebs and broken beer bottles or something.

So they removed the plaque. They saw the copper box in there, but swear they did not touch it.

"We still have no idea what's in it," Divine said. "The fun part about it is it was a random conversation from a community member that started all of this."

They've decided not to open it yet. Maybe in 2024, when it will have been 50 years. That seems appropriate.

Unless everyone forgets to tell the next group of people who run the college, or unless those people forget to tell the next group.

Maybe someone should leave a Post-it note.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.