Buying Land in Bourbon County, Kansas

No Zoning Yet -- But a First-Ever Code Is Actively Being Drafted

Could not confirm

Bourbon County has no adopted county-wide zoning ordinance today (a 2016 Kansas Corporation Commission survey found the county had adopted no building codes either), so a rural, unincorporated parcel outside Fort Scott's 3-mile extraterritorial zoning ring is currently subject to no county zoning restrictions. That is genuinely changing: in 2026, county commissioners hired the planning firm Confluence (already working on a similar project for Cherokee County) to draft Bourbon County's first-ever comprehensive plan and zoning code, covering unincorporated land plus coordination with Fort Scott, Bronson, Uniontown, Fulton, Redfield, and Mapleton. A buyer should treat current zoning freedom as temporary and confirm the draft plan's status and timeline directly with the county before assuming today's lack of zoning will persist.

Outside Every Kansas Groundwater Management District

Generally favorable

Bourbon County sits in southeast Kansas, outside the territory of all five Groundwater Management Districts, which cover western and central Kansas over the Ogallala or Equus Beds aquifers. Water rights here run through the state's standard Division of Water Resources prior-appropriation process alone -- confirm any specific existing water right's status directly with DWR.

A 2026 Moratorium on New Energy/Data Projects -- With Named Exceptions

Case-by-case / verify locally

Bourbon County commissioners adopted a 365-day moratorium (Resolution 24-26) in 2026 on new utility-scale power generation, cryptocurrency mining, data centers, and certain waste-disposal operations -- but explicitly exempted three already-agreed solar projects: Tennyson Creek Solar LLC, Tennyson Creek Solar II LLC, and Hinton Creek Solar LLC, all of which had development agreements signed with the county as of October 2024. Tennyson Creek alone is reported as a roughly 300-megawatt solar-plus-200-megawatt-storage project. For any parcel near an active or proposed solar site, confirm current lease/easement status, development-agreement terms, and whether the moratorium (or the pending new zoning code) affects the parcel directly with the county; for any parcel being pitched for a new utility-scale energy, mining, or data-center use, confirm the moratorium's current status and expiration date before assuming such a use is available.