Victoria

Victoria County is regarded as the place where Texas history began because it is the only place in the state where all of the Six Flags Over Texas flew, and it was one of the original counties formed after Texas gained independence from Mexico in 1836. The area that is now Victoria County was home to the first European settlement in Texas when the French explorer Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle arrived in 1685 and established Fort Saint Louis at the southeastern tip of present-day Victoria County. That French outpost and its aftermath led to Spanish settlement of Texas, with missions and presidios established there to convert local tribes and check French encroachment. Nearly 140 years after La Salle's arrival, Martin de Leon founded a colony along the Guadalupe River in 1824 and named it Villa Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Jesus Victoria in honor of Our Lady of the Guadalupe and the first President of the Republic of Mexico. After the Texas Revolution, the community became known simply as Victoria.

Victoria, Texas · United States