Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Fort Scott, KS

Fort Scott is the county seat of Bourbon County in southeastern Kansas, sitting on the south bank of the Marmaton River about four miles from the Missouri state line.

The city takes its name from the U.S. Army post established in 1842 along the Military Road between Fort Leavenworth and Fort Gibson, named for General Winfield Scott.

Fort Scott guarded the 'Permanent Indian Frontier' from 1842 to 1853, then returned to service during Bleeding Kansas and the Civil War as a Union supply and training center.

The restored fort is now Fort Scott National Historic Site, a 17-acre National Park Service site preserving 20 historic structures, a parade ground and five acres of restored tallgrass prairie; it was designated a National Historic Site in 1978.

Fort Scott National Cemetery, established on November 15, 1862, lies two miles southeast of the old fort.

The national historic site draws roughly 25,000 visitors a year.

Fort Scott Community College, founded in 1919, is the oldest continuously operating community college in Kansas.

Photographer, author and filmmaker Gordon Parks was born in Fort Scott on November 30, 1912, the youngest of 15 children of a tenant-farming family.

Parks, the first Black staff photographer at Life magazine and the director of The Learning Tree and Shaft, is honored by the Gordon Parks Museum at Fort Scott Community College, and he is buried in the city's Evergreen Cemetery.

Parks filmed his autobiographical movie The Learning Tree in Fort Scott, returning to the hometown that shaped his work.