History

The Historical Society of Future History was founded in 1971, the same year Cholla Vista incorporated. At the town council's second-ever meeting, pharmacist Ida Brauer observed that the incorporation just concluded would someday be history, and moved that 'the paperwork begin immediately.' The council established the Centennial Anticipation Commission that evening, charged with assembling materials for the town's centennial in 2071. Brauer's bequest of $9,000, earmarked in her will 'for whatever comes,' funded the society's first decade of operations and its original card stock.

The society's method has changed little since 1971. Residents file predictions on Form F-1 (Anticipated Event, Single), which are sealed in archival envelopes and shelved by the date on which the predicted event is to occur. Notarization has been required since 1976, following what the minutes describe only as 'a period of enthusiasm.' On the appointed date, each envelope is opened before witnesses and its prediction stamped OCCURRED, DID NOT OCCUR, or PARTIAL, then refiled as ordinary history. The society regards this final step as the entire point and resists efforts to hurry it.

Alongside the envelope program, the reading room maintains an open collection of official projections: county growth estimates from 1974, a state highway traffic forecast for the year 2040, and the school district's enrollment model, updated annually and shelved beside its own previous editions, several of which have now been stamped. All are cataloged under HISTORY, PENDING, a heading the society's first archivist defended as 'accurate in both directions.'

The society's most serious setback occurred in 1983, when a volunteer refiled a drawer alphabetically by event rather than chronologically by date, and sixty envelopes were opened between five and eighty-eight years early. The contents were witnessed, resealed, and annotated SEEN EARLY — DISREGARD, and the affected filings carry a small red dot to this day. The incident cost $1,700 in archival materials and led to the two-person drawer rule, which remains in force.

Local Legends

Residents claim a 1972 envelope correctly anticipated the 1994 closure of the gravel pit to the day. The society notes only that the envelope in question was stamped PARTIAL, and declines to elaborate, citing filing policy.

It is said the society holds a prediction about itself, filed by its own first archivist and scheduled for opening in 2046. Staff confirm the envelope exists and describe it as 'of ordinary weight.'

Some maintain the reading room clock is set four minutes fast on purpose. The society attributes this to the clock.

The Controversy

Since 1987 the Arizona Association of Historical Societies has declined the society's membership application on the grounds that its collection 'has not yet happened.' The society reapplies each year with the same one-sentence argument: 'It will have.' Both parties describe relations as cordial, and the correspondence itself is now archived, sealed, and scheduled for public reading in 2071.

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