LOST VEGAS: The Lost Casino Time Capsules
Posted on: February 17, 2026, 07:21h.
Last updated on: February 16, 2026, 09:17h.
- Seven time capsules were buried by Las Vegas Strip casino resorts over the decades
- In all likelihood, none will be unearthed on schedule, most not even at all
- Two have already overshot their dates, one was accidentally hauled to a garbage dump, and the location and condition of the other four are unknown
Time capsules are feelgood traditions during which the people who own cultural landmarks bury things beneath them — things they assume that future generations will find historically significant about their time.
According to our research, seven time capsules were buried by three Strip casinos over the years. But, in a pattern symbolic of Las Vegas’ disregard for its own history, none are likely to be dug up and opened by the future generation that was intended to do so.
That’s because in Las Vegas, land routinely passes from casino owners who bury time capsules to new owners with zero interest in preserving their predecessors’ legacies — let alone spending money to jackhammer concrete to retrieve them.
Sands
Sands of Time
Las Vegas’ first time capsule — buried Dec. 15, 1953 — celebrated the first anniversary of the Sands. Entertainment director Jack Entratter, known for his outsized sense of spectacle, had it built as an 12-foot faux rocket to suggest its voyage into the future. It slid down a custom-built guide rail directly into its eventual burial spot on the front lawn.
The rocket’s payload contained, among other items:
- A wax impression of singer Jimmy Durante’s nose
- Sands entertainer Tallulah Bankhead’s signed autobiography
- Wizard of Oz star Ray Bolger’s dancing shoes
- Crooner Bing Crosby’s pipe
- Actor/singer Maurice Chevalier’s straw hat
- Sugar Ray Robinson’s boxing gloves
- “Short’nin’ Bread” sheet music autographed by Nelson Eddy
- Transcript of a Louella Parsons radio interview with Frank Sinatra
Durante and Bankhead — who signed her book “To 2053 A.D., good luck!” — gathered to pose with and help fill the capsule, which was scheduled to be unearthed 100 years later.
The problem with time capsules, though, is that once they’re buried, life goes on and people forget about them. After the Sands’ lawn was swallowed up by a 1963 lobby expansion, the first Las Vegas capsule was accidentally hauled off with construction debris to a North Las Vegas municipal dump.
And we only know this because a year later, Las Vegas resident Ada Conn happened to take her family “rat picking” (their term for antique-scavenging) at that dump. (Its superintendent operated a personal side hustle, charging $1 per item retrieved.)
“Is that an old bomb?” Conn asked her husband and daughter about the strange metal cannister they discovered, which contained items stored in plastic bags.
When the Sands celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1977, newspaper stories ran photos of the capsule being filled 14 years earlier.
Conn contacted the Sands about what was stored and forgotten in their attic.
“The people that own these things have a right to have them back if they want them,” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the time.
Executives at the property had no idea the capsule was lost and were in fact thinking of erecting a marker in the lobby revealing its approximate underground location.
The multiple boxes Conn returned to Sands executives contained Bolger’s shoes, Bankhead’s autobiography, the “Short’nin’ Bread” sheet music, and the Louella Parsons transcript. But the capsule was already open when the Conns found it, so the other items listed above were assumed to have fallen out.
Sands of Time II
Sands execs gave this a second try on Feb. 6, 1978 — missing the property’s actual 25th anniversary by two months. Of the first capsule’s retrieved treasures, only Ray Bolger’s shoes were reburied. (The tradition of time capsules dictates that they contain items current at their time of burial. Conn was allowed to keep the other ’50s collectibles she found as a reward for returning them.)
Sands of Time II contained, among other items:
- Ray Bolger’s dancing shoes (again)
- Medallions from Wayne Newton and Sammy Davis Jr.
- Roy Clark’s monogrammed handkerchief
- Jimmy Durante’s trousers from his final Sands show in 1970
- Peanuts from President Jimmy Carter’s Georgia farm
- Winning silks from Seattle Slew
- A signed baseball from New York Yankees manager Billy Martin
Having learned their lesson that future generations tend to lose track of time capsules, Sands execs scheduled this one’s unearthing for only 25 years in the future instead of 100.
Alas, the Sands would not get to unearth the capsule on its 50th anniversary in 2002 as planned, because it would be purchased six years before that by billionaire Sheldon Adelson.
No one knows exactly where underneath his Venetian the Sands of Time II now rests — that’s if it wasn’t crushed by the legendary 1996 demolition of the Sands tower and hauled away to the same dump as the first capsule.
No Venetian owner, Adelson or Apollo Global Management/VICI Properties, ever expressed any interest in finding the lost capsule.
Stardust
The Sands was not only the first Las Vegas casino to bury a time capsule, it was also the last to make a celebrity event out of it.
All capsules elsewhere on the Strip were filled exclusively with casino memorabilia and buried during ceremonies open only to casino employees.
1961 Capsule: Buried on September 14 on the Stardust’s new golf course, this included a 1961 Stardust brochure, room key, gaming chip, matchbox, and a list of current hotel executives. It was scheduled to be opened 100 years later.
2003 Capsule: Yet another rocket-shaped capsule, this one was buried on July 2 to commemorate the property’s 45th anniversary. Its items included the original 1958 Stardust ledger and vintage chips. Reopening day was also supposed to be 100 years later.
The Stardust was imploded on March 13, 2007 and, for the same reasons that apply to the Sands’ capsule, neither of the Stardust’s is likely to ever be recovered. Resorts World now sits atop the site.
Desert Inn
1985 Capsule: Stuffed with casino memorabilia and buried for the resort’s 35th anniversary, this one was scheduled to be opened 35 years later on April 24, 2020. As you probably have deduced, it wasn’t.
1992 Capsule: This one contained a media kit, chips and a VHS of the TV show Vega$, among other memorabilia. Scheduled for unearthing 50 years later, it was buried on an off anniversary (the D.I.’s 42nd) because owner Kirk Kerkorian sought to immediately inflate the property’s perceived historicity, and thus its value.
Kerkorian wanted to unload the expensive-to-run relic so he could concentrate fully on another resort he owned up the street. A year later, ITT Sheraton snapped up the D.I. and Kerkorian opened the current MGM Grand.
2000 Capsule: Entombed in a granite chamber by the casino entrance during the property’s 50th anniversary on April 24, this capsule was supposed to be reopened on the D.I.’s 100th anniversary. But the property wouldn’t even survive another four months. Four days after burying the capsule, the D.I. was purchased by one of the greatest foes of historic preservation who ever lived.
Casino mogul Steve Wynn shuttered the historic hangout, where Frank Sinatra made his Las Vegas debut in 1951. While demolishing it from 2001 to 2004, he exerted zero effort to retrieve any of its time capsules for safekeeping. All three are believed to be either lost, crushed or still buried intact somewhere beneath the Wynn and/or Encore’s entrances.
“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history. Click here to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.
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