At the foot of the Washington Monument, Americans and Brits took turns envisioning how the United States will look in 250 years.
“God willing, this monument will still be here, and our values will still be strong,” said Kevin Lilly, U.S. assistant interior secretary for fish and wildlife.
“We’re going to go a long way forward,” said Christian Turner, British ambassador to the U.S.
“I feel like we’ll definitely make progress,” said Mara Occhuizzo, a Virginia middle-schooler. “Hopefully the U.K. and the U.S. are still allies, but you never really know.”
They were gathered, along with a former governor, a couple of Trump officials and several members of a Virginia-based society dedicated to a statue in London, to bury a time capsule commemorating not only America’s 250th birthday but its long-standing relationship with Great Britain. Beneath the obelisk dedicated to George Washington, flags representing the nation’s army he defeated flapped in the wind.
Burying a time capsule is an inherent act of optimism because it bets that someone will be around to dig it up — and care enough to do so. The one buried Tuesday (the first official one ever on the National Mall, according to the British Embassy) will be unearthed, if all goes to plan, in 2276.
The time capsule contains letters written by President Donald Trump, King Charles III, Vice President JD Vance and former Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, among others. It also includes a commemorative Royal Mint coin dedicated by the king, essays and poems from students (including one from Occhuizzo, age 12) and a container of dirt from the historic ancestral home of the Washington family in Northamptonshire, England.
“To try and capture life in 2026 in one thing that size would be next to impossible,” said Turner. “But it’s a snapshot, it’s one slice, one photo that will speak to the future.”
While the United States has spent much of the year celebrating its birthday, Britain has taken opportunities to party with what was once its colony, too. In April, King Charles III and Queen Camilla completed a four-day state visit that included handshaking with much of Washington, a congressional address, trips to New York City and Shenandoah National Park, and a quintessentially American parade through the small town of Front Royal, Virginia.
Later this week, the Duke of Edinburgh is scheduled to visit George Washington’s Mount Vernon to commemorate America’s 250th. Earlier this month, the British Embassy debuted a new on-site pub called “The Two Georges,” a reference to George Washington and King George III — another nod to the nations’ shared history, even if the two warring leaders probably wouldn’t have gone for a pint.
“Here we are to celebrate the deep and enduring friendship between Britain and America 250 years in the making,” Turner said. “Surely something, I suspect, that neither George Washington nor King George III would have quite imagined back in 1776.”
The event Tuesday had a history several years in the making, starting with calls to repair a 1914 statue of George Washington in London’s Trafalgar Square. Friends of the Washington Statue, a Virginia nonprofit with former Virginia first lady Suzanne Youngkin as its honorary chair, raised $1.4 million last summer to have the statue restored and reinstated at the entrance of Britain’s National Gallery, causing a stir among Brits confused as to why their nation should honor the rebel in such a prominent location.
In a nod to a long-standing tour guide legend that said the statue was planted on transported Virginia soil to honor Washington’s reputed pledge to never again set foot on British soil, the group buried dirt from Mount Vernon underneath the new statue. They also buried another time capsule — a twin to the one now buried on the National Mall, with the same letters, similar artifacts and more student works (including an English student’s rap about Washington).
The original time capsule buried last year was custom designed by famed British architect Norman Foster, milled from a large piece of stainless steel.
“They wanted to make two to make sure it worked, right, in case they screwed one up,” said Friends of Washington Statue Chairman John Gerber. “So we got two. And we thought, ‘What do we do with the second one?’”
That’s how the group landed on the idea for a second time capsule, for which they did not think they would receive approval to bury on the Mall, Gerber said. But he liked the symbolism of having two capsules to represent the relationship between the two nations. A stainless steel strip will delineate the burial spot on the granite flagstone, which is on the northeast corner of the monument and points toward the Washington Statue in Trafalgar Square, Gerber said.
The embassy considered burying the capsule during the king’s visit in the spring, but “we had a very tight and prescribed time scale,” Turner said.
The event included speeches from Turner, Lilly, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Youngkin that at times referenced the War of 1812 and the British spy thriller show “Slow Horses,” plus performances from the “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band and the United Kingdom’s Band and Bugles of The Rifles. Tourists stopped to take photos or listen.
Should someone uncover the capsule in 250 years, on the nation’s quincentennial, they will find the words of leaders — a president and a king — plastered in the capsule and elsewhere across history. But they will also find the poem, a meditation on the meaning of freedom in 2026, written by a tween who had to skip a day of middle school to watch it be buried.
“It feels,” Occhuizzo said, “like I have a legacy.”
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