Victoria

George Grant's party reached Ellis County in 1873 with a herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle, four bulls among them, a herd credited with establishing the American Angus breed. A monument to that contribution stands in the cemetery around Grant's stone St. George church, which was never consecrated. The Volga Germans who came in 1875 from villages near Saratov laid out their own town half a mile north of the Victoria station, recorded as Herzog or North Victoria. Herzog grew fast and took the station's name, and in 1913 the two incorporated together as Victoria.

What the plaque says

Victoria Victoria was established in 1872 by George Grant, a wealthy Scotsman who chose the name for the reigning queen of England. Grant hoped to make a profit by recruiting others to raise cattle. After his death, many of the Englishmen he recruited left the area. German Russians arrived looking for good land and the freedom to follow their traditional way of life. Their descendants built St. Fidelis Church. While passing through Victoria in 1912, presidential candidate and Nebraska congressman William Jennings Bryan was so struck by St. Fidelis Church that he bestowed a memorable title upon it: "Cathedral on the Plains." The giant building spoke volumes about the devotion of the families in the parish. Each parishioner at least 12 years of age was obliged to contribute six wagonloads of stone, which had to be quarried and loaded by hand. With seating for 1,100, it ranked as one of the largest churches in Kansas when it opened in 1911. St. Fidelis Church is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Erected by the State of Kansas

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sternberg Museum of Natural History — 8.7 mi
  Fort Hays State University's museum under the old Metroplex dome off I-70, built around a family of fossil hunters who started digging in the Kansas chalk and sandstone in the 1860s.
• Fort Hays State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The 1867 blockhouse, guardhouse and two officers' quarters of a post on Cheyenne and Arapaho land, and what the post surgeon's ledgers and a sold-off reservation left behind.

More markers nearby

• Fort Hays — 11 mi