In 2001, Andalusia Mayor Earl Johnson and local Marine Corps veteran Kenneth G. Johnson began developing a veterans' park and monument in Covington County to honor U.S. veterans, fulfilling a long-held dream of local veterans and their families. The project began with a donation of the park site and a $25,000 seed grant from the City of Andalusia, followed by more than two years of planning, fundraising, design, and construction. It was dedicated on Veterans' Day, November 11, 2004, with Dr. Jack Hawkins, Jr., chancellor of Troy University and a former Marine Corps Viet Nam veteran, delivering the dedicatory address. Designed by Birmingham landscape architect Dale Fritz, the monument and surrounding park include a stainless steel obelisk rising forty-two feet above a granite base listing the names of all Covington County U.S. armed service veterans, brick pavers for those killed in action beginning with World War I and for veterans with connections to Covington County, a five-pointed star representing the five branches of the U.S. armed services, and eleven flagpoles representing the eleventh day of the eleventh month, Veterans' Day. The five-thousand-pound stainless steel obelisk, designed and assembled by local metalsmith William Merrill and believed to be the largest of its type in the United States, stands on an eight-foot-tall black granite pedestal made by Sam Carroll Memorial, Inc., of Andalusia. The site also includes a monument to Covington County's only Medal of Honor recipient, Marine Sergeant Rodney J. Evans, and a monument honoring recipients of the Purple Heart, the oldest of all U.S. military medals.