The Missing Time Capsule

If the totem pole that keeps watch over Centennial Park in Livermore, California witnessed the secret burial here 25 years ago, it's not saying. So, using powerful metal detectors, officials are searching for Livermore's missing time capsule, reports CBS News Correspondent John Blackstone.

"This is I think, 10 or 12 holes that have been dug around the park," Barry Schrader, Historical Society. Mayor Cathie Brown says there are no clues in the municipal records.

"There's no map, no directions, no one saved anything," says Mayor Cathie Brown. Those who buried the time capsule are long retired.

Says Brown: "Some of them think its behind the totem pole. Others think its in front of the totem pole. Now I'm learning it may be under the totem pole."

The problem, says Barry Schrader, who helped fill the time capsule, is that they put in a bottle of wine.

"They were afraid that some vandals would dig it up and drink the wine, take out the artifacts, so they kept it a secret," says Barry Schrader of the Centennial Committee. "Too good a secret unfortunately."

The Livermore City Council is now going to Plan C. They're calling in the military. A local navy base has offered high-tech equipment usually used to find bombs to try to locate the elusive time capsule.

The plan was to put the contents in a new time capsule being buried to mark the millennium.

Says Schrader: "We're gonna put a big brass plaque, a thousand-dollar brass plaque, mounted in cement with bolts right over the top saying 'Buried Here.'"

The most valuable thing in the missing time capsule may be lesson about the importance of planning ahead.