Few places in America brought together two more unlike colonies than those that settled here: scarlet-coated British aristocrats, encouraged by Scotsman George Grant on 69,000 acres he bought from the railway, and frugal, hard-working German-Russian immigrants who came for religious freedom and to escape the czar’s army. One colony favored country estates, cricket, and Hays City dance halls, while the other sought homestead rights and the steppe-like prairie. Victoria was established in 1873, named for a queen, and laid out by a London architect; Herzog, just north, was established in 1876, built of sod, and named for a Volga village. By 1880 most of the aristocrats had moved on, and Herzog took over Victoria. Important achievements here included Grant’s introduction of Aberdeen Angus cattle to the U.S. and the immigrants’ pioneer crops of hard winter wheat. Victoria now includes both towns, and its Catholic church, St. Fidelis, is widely known as the “Cathedral of the Plains.” In a cemetery one-fourth mile west are the graves of track workers massacred by Cheyennes in 1867.