What the heartland is burying for the next 250 years

What's inside: A whale bone from Maine, a George Washington prayer medal from Utah and a diamond from the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, to name a few.

• Organizers banned anything that could rot, which reportedly doomed Maryland's push to include Old Bay seasoning.

Zoom in: Missouri sent a coin carrying Gov. Mike Kehoe's name and signature on one side and the state seal, with its two grizzly bears and "United We Stand, Divided We Fall" motto, on the other, plus a letter to future Americans.

• Kansas skipped the keepsakes entirely and sent a single sheet recapping its Kansas 250 Commission and a handful of 2026 news items.
• See the full list.

The intrigue: They had company in playing it safe, since paper was the most popular submission nationwide, the AP reported.

• But plenty of states swung bigger: Ohio tucked in fabric from the Wright brothers' 1903 flight, Iowa an astronaut's space station medallion, Nevada a stack of casino chips and New Mexico a turquoise squash blossom necklace.

What we would have packed: KC lives on both sides of the state line, so if we'd had the pen, we'd have lobbied for a few local keepsakes instead:

• A ticket stub from one of the six World Cup matches in KC this summer.
• Freeze-dried burnt ends, obviously.
• The Kansas 250 gift box of state-made honey, kettle corn and bourbon, real and for sale right now, though it likely never had a shot.

You tell us: What would you bury to show 2276 what KC is? Reply and let us know!