This particular case was the granite cornerstone of the soon-to-be former police headquarters at 130 Central Main St.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled May 7 for the new spacious Pueblo Municipal Justice Center, which will house the police department and municipal court.
Pueblo police have begun packing for the move, and on Wednesday they made sure to take some of their history with them.
"We didn't know what would be in there. We weren't sure if there'd be just crumbles," Police Chief Jim Billings said about the contents recovered from the old cornerstone's time capsule.
Inside was a sealed copper box, about 1 foot long and 6 inches wide.
City workers carefully cut open the box. Inside, they found numerous black-and-white photographs, newspapers, a city letterhead, a dime and two pennies dating back to the 1940s, and other artifacts.
One of the newspapers was the Pueblo Star-Journal and Sunday Chieftain. On Page 8 of the Feb. 20, 1949, issue was a story about the dedication of the cornerstone.
There's also was a small book about the Pueblo Masons, who helped seal the cornerstone. The Masons will participate in next week's dedication of the new building.
City workers took most of Wednesday to remove and crack open the corner block and then patch up the hole.
Billings said that when the stone was fully removed, he called former police Chief Robert Silva, who headed the department from 1977 to 1993, asking him to come to the station to witness the box's opening.
Artifacts from the cornerstone are being displayed in the lobby of the new police station, located at 200 S. Main St.
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