If a local Bourbon County resident’s plans come to fruition, Bourbon County will have a new monument in front of the courthouse. John Snalt, a graduate of Fort Scott High School, is raising funds to put a large commemorative pylon on the courthouse lawn.

“We are constantly making history in Bourbon County, and this monument will be a way for future generations to appreciate what has been accomplished,” Snalt explained. He said he wants to make sure that people 100 years from now can fully appreciate all the hard work that went into keeping Bourbon County alive.

The pylon is designed to have four sides. One side will cover achievements related to education. “The goal is to record noteworthy events,” he said. “We’d like to list the number of graduates in the county each year and any relevant educational achievements made in the county.”

Another side would be dedicated to achievements in sports. “When a local team gets to state finals, we want to make sure people remember it,” said Snalt. He said seeing what your community has done in the past is a good way for future generations to aim high themselves.

Another side will be dedicated to business achievements and show new businesses that have opened or places that have closed.

The fourth side would be dedicated to local government and highlight key events. “This side of the monument will help record the names of people serving in local government as well as notable events and achievements,” explained Snalt.

The monument will start out mostly blank, so information can be added each year. “We want this to be a type of living historical record where the acts and achievements of today are recorded for the future,” said Snalt.

Originally, the monument was designed to be 20 feet tall in order to accommodate records for the next 50 years. However, recent events have sent Snalt back to the drawing board to design a much larger monument.

Based on rapid turnover in the county commission, Snalt says a 20-foot monument would only have enough room to handle the records for the next two years.

“Don’t forget we don’t want this to just be a dry record of names,” he said. “We want more of what was actually happening. That includes the good and the bad, so we plan to include things like the significant lawsuits that the county is involved in.”

Snalt said that when the current commissioner turnover and the vast number of lawsuits being started are taken into consideration, the monument will need to be approximately four and a half miles high. That larger size requires a much larger budget. Snalt is hoping for local residents to join the cause and help him raise the approximately 3 trillion necessary for the granite needed in construction. “We hope to have enough donors to start construction in exactly one year from today on April 1st.”

Snalt was previously involved in the efforts to build a snake pit in Gunn Park back on April 1st, in 2024, and inspired the alligator petting zoo plans from April 1st, 2025.

In what stargazers are calling a “bold step toward celestial stewardship,” the Bourbon County Commission voted Monday to approve a new rural dark-sky ordinance so strict that residents will no longer be allowed to use vehicle headlights at night anywhere in the county.

The ordinance, passed after what attendees described as “an unusually confident discussion of lumens,” sets maximum allowable outdoor light levels at just below “a jar of lightning bugs with a towel draped over it.” Standard vehicle headlights, porch lights, flashlights, and “overly ambitious glow sticks” are now considered unlawful light pollution.

Commissioners said the new rules are necessary to preserve residents’ God-given right to see every star in the heavens, including several “fainter ones that have historically been none of our business.”

“We have lost touch with the natural darkness that is a vital part of Bourbon County’s attractive quality of life,” one commissioner said while holding a printed chart no one could read because the room lights had already been turned off in anticipation of the vote. “If people need to travel after sunset, they need to plan ahead, drive slower, and perhaps ask themselves whether the trip is really worth disrupting Orion.”

Under the new ordinance, drivers must now choose from a list of county-approved nighttime navigation methods, including moonlight, memory, passenger-operated lantern shielding, and “quiet instinct.” The commission is also expected to publish a voluntary map of roads considered “less ditch-prone.”

Reaction from the public has been swift. Farmers raised questions about operating equipment before sunrise, parents wondered how evening activities would work, and several teenagers were reportedly delighted to learn the county had made it illegal for school buses to pick them up before sunrise.

At the same meeting, commissioners tabled a related proposal that would require all porch lights to be replaced with “period-appropriate candles in shaded mason jars.” That measure is expected to return next month after further study by the county’s newly formed Subcommittee on Responsible Gloom.

At press time, officials were considering a minor amendment allowing one headlight per vehicle, provided it is pointed mostly downward and described in county records as “more of a suggestion than a beam.”