Photo by Jerry Sowden - Hasson Elementary fifth-grade teacher Kay Dawson pulls out the contents of one of the time capsules rescued from the corner stones of the former Oil City High School on Graff Street. The capsules and corner stones have been stored at the district maintenance building since the school was razed in the autumn of 2000.

Gingerly tapping away with a chisel and hammer, Mel Britton, maintenance supervisor for the Oil City Area School District, worked steadily at chipping away a heavy leaded seam on a sealed copper box.

Watching intently all around him in the school board meeting room Monday morning was an assortment of history buffs and school district employees, each quietly waiting for the green-tinged box lid to pop open.

Hovering closer than the others were Oil City teachers and history buffs Kay Dawson and Carrie Richey, each wearing gloves.

The occasion was the understated opening of two gritty metal boxes that had been encased in cornerstones at the old Oil City High School at Spring and Graff. Long the victims of an out-of-sight, out-of-mind view, the 1898 and 1932 time capsules unexpectedly came to light recently.

School officials knew the two containers, each the size of a shoebox, were in the old high school's stone corner blocks stored at the district's maintenance building on East Second Street. Their contents were to be sorted out during an event tentatively scheduled for July 2003.

"Remember the micro-burst? That stopped the plan and so the capsules were put back and sort of forgotten," said Dawson, keeping a close eye on the box prying. "Mel (Britton) recently came across them at the maintenance building."

The impetus to open them now, she continued, is the upcoming Oil 150 celebration marking the sesquicentennial (1859-2009) of the oil industry. The school district, namely Dawson and Richey, will examine and categorize the items inside the two boxes, research the information, and publicly share the contents and the history that goes with it at an Oil 150 event next summer in Oil City

The city's history of secondary education begins only a few years later than does the petroleum industry's heritage.

Oil City organized a formal high school curriculum in 1875 and classes were held in a building on State Street and later a small school on Central Avenue.

The first high school was built in 1898-99 at Spring and Graff streets on the city's North Side.

In 1932, a major addition was put on the building.

Those two construction projects resulted in capsule-filled cornerstones, now the objects of affection for Britton and the lookers.

The first box

Back at the box manipulations, Britton has the lid pried off the 1898 box and Dawson reaches in to free a stack of old Derrick and Blizzard newspapers. Surprisingly, the crinkly but legible publications bear 1939 dates.

"Now what is this? Did they remove the 1898 things earlier?" mused Dawson as she poked in the box to reveal assorted school documents.

Another surprise was waiting.

The newspapers had been wrapped around a smaller box, the actual 1898 time capsule, which revealed a cache of old newspapers and assorted documents, all dated from the first year the high school was in session. Each item was carefully shifted by the gloves-wearing Dawson and Richey to a spot on a sheet-covered table nearby.

The 1898 box had been removed from that part of the high school that was demolished in 1938 and re-interred in a larger container in 1939 when the remaining original portion of the school was razed and an addition put on to the 1932 structure.

The second box

Next up was the 1932 capsule.

Inside a lead box, whose exterior is covered with scratches of the names of workers on the school site the day the cornerstone was laid, was a tidily wrapped book-size package in heavy paper and heavy tape. Photographs, documents, commencement programs, Senior High News editions and much more came tumbling out.

The school documents offer a who's who inventory of students and faculty during those specific periods at the high school. Pamphlets outline the economic fortunes of a city of 22,000-plus residents. The details of school functions, from sports to commencements, are squeezed into reports.

"Now, we catalog, preserve and research in preparation for the Oil 150 celebration in Oil City. That's when we want to reveal the details of what is in these two capsules and lay it out for the public," Dawson said.

Eventually, said Joe Carrico, Oil City school superintendent, the actual time capsules may be installed in one fashion or another in a small courtyard at the high school.

"We might make it an oil history, community-themed area," Carrico said. "The two cornerstones and the capsules might just go in there."