Victoria District National Historic Site of Canada

Victoria District was designated a national historic site because its cultural landscape, through highly visible and intact physical attributes, represents an exceptional illustration in one concentrated area of major themes in Prairie settlement including the development of the fur trade, the establishment of the Métis river lot system, the arrival of missions, Prairie agricultural development and the establishment of eastern European immigrants at the beginning of the 20th-century.

Its heritage values resides in the topography and settlement forms, including land-usage patterns and architecture, that speak to the history of settlement in this area. It was the district's strategic location as a stop on Cree and Stony First Nations' migration routes that first led non-Aboriginal settlers under George McDougall to establish a Methodist Mission in 1863. Métis began establishing river-lot farms in 1865, with Ukrainian, British, Canadian and American settlers engaging in more intensive farming organized in the Township survey system from the early years of the twentieth century.