DeLeon City Plaza – Victoria, TX
This plaza is the quaint, small-city town square of Victoria, TX, with a Victorian bandstand at its center, an amphitheater, and park benches under a canopy of live oaks, pecans, and magnolias. As a bonus, there are public restrooms.
We arrived on Christmas Day, and it was perfect, with few people around, allowing us to take pictures to our hearts’ content. The downside is that nothing is open.
On one corner of the square is a statue of the city’s founders, Martín De León and his wife, Patricia De La Garza De León. They founded the settlement of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Jesús Victoria in 1824, and it has since grown into a city of more than 60,000 people. The plaza has been the heart of town ever since: it was platted as the original town square, the bandstand has stood since before 1885, and the whole square is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. On the northeast corner, six flags mark every nation that has flown over Texas.
The 1892 county courthouse can be seen across the square, and the Nave Museum is a short walk away if you’re making a morning of it downtown.