On June 15, 1957, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, buried a brand-new Plymouth Belvedere in a concrete vault in front of its courthouse. When it came out 50 years later, it had been sitting in nearly 2,000 gallons of water.
The car was the centerpiece of Tulsarama!, a celebration of Oklahoma’s 50 years of statehood. It was a gold and white Belvedere with just four miles on the odometer, according to autoevolution, and it went into a 12-by-20-foot concrete vault, per AP coverage on CBS News. The vault was built to withstand a nuclear attack, the AP reported. Organizer Sharon King Davis is the one who gave the car its nickname, Miss Belvedere.
The deal was simple. Tulsans guessed what the city’s population would be in 2007, and whoever came closest would win the car plus a $100 savings account, according to the AP story in The Spokesman-Review. Raymond Humbertson’s guess of 384,743 beat the field. The actual 2007 population was 382,457, according to Paleofuture.
The opening of the fifty-year-old vault drew thousands of spectators. On June 15, 2007, crews removed a protective wrapping caked in red mud to reveal a car covered in rust that wouldn’t start, the AP reported. According to autoevolution, about 2,000 gallons of water had built up inside the vault, reaching a depth of about four feet. “I’ll tell you what, she’s a mess. Look at her,” said hot rod builder Boyd Coddington.
The crowd didn’t seem to mind. “It’s our King Tut’s tomb,” car enthusiast Dave Stragand told NBC News. “It’s like a fairy tale.”
Not everything inside was ruined, though. The vault held a can of leaded gasoline and rusted cans of Schlitz beer, but a separate time capsule held an unfaded American flag, historical documents and aerial city maps in good condition, per the AP.
The prize had a twist, too. Humbertson had died in 1979, so the car went to his heirs. Dwight Foster of the shop Ultra One donated about $20,000 in work to stabilize it, and the car has been on display since 2020 at Historic Auto Attractions in Roscoe, Illinois, according to Old Cars Weekly. “People love a story like this,” museum owner Wayne Lensing said.
Some time capsules are still waiting. Dolly Parton, for one, sealed a song in one that isn’t set to open until 2045.