Victoria, Illinois

12 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1931 and the latest in 1989. It stands in Copley Township. It lies in ZIP code area 61485. The Survey maps it on the Victoria quadrangle. 268 people lived here at the 2020 count.

Victoria within Knox County

Population over time

2 figures

Victoria fell from 316 to 268 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

Year	People	Change
2010	316
2020	268	-48 (-15%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

9 surveys from 12 printed sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

1931 USGS Galva quadrangle1:48000
1940 USGS Galva quadrangle1:62500, 2 printings
1944 USGS Galva quadrangle1:62500, 2 printings
1958 USGS Davenport quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
1961 USGS Davenport quadrangle1:250000
1962 USGS Davenport quadrangle1:250000
1982 USGS Victoria quadrangle1:24000
1984 USGS Aledo quadrangle1:100000
1989 USGS Aledo quadrangle1:100000

In the county-history sources

15,353 words on this township

Annals of Knox County : Commemorating Centennial of Admission of Illinois As a State of the Union in 1818, published 1921 names this settlement in its chapter on Copley Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The surface of Copley Township, so named from a prominent family of that name at one time residing in it, consists chiefly of fertile prairie land, just sufficiently rolling to ensure good drainage, though in its southern part there is some broken ground, probably one-fourth of its area having been originally timber land.

Passage source: Annals of Knox County : Commemorating Centennial of Admission of Illinois As a State of the Union in 1818, published 1921.

The first child born in Copley was a son of Mathew Herbert, in 1836. The first death was that of Harriet Foster, in 1842. Rev. Charles Bostwick and Mrs Hurr were the first couple to be married, and Rev. Mr. Bostwick preached the first sermon in 1840, in a log school house.

Passage source: Annals of Knox County : Commemorating Centennial of Admission of Illinois As a State of the Union in 1818, published 1921.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Copley Township - it names this place 1 more 1 time.

Storms near this place

12 since 1996

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Victoria in 12 storm reports between 1996 and 2025: 4 thunderstorm wind, 4 tornado, 4 hail. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
June 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Victoria	$65,000	A two-story barn and numerous trees were blown down.
April 2025	Tornado (EF1)	Victoria	-	A tornado touched down just south of Highway 167 about a mile west of Victoria at 8:39 PM CDT. The tornado snapped 4 power poles along Highway 167, then tracked northeastward and damaged numerous trees and a few outbuildings before passing through the Galva Cemetery and crossing into the National Weather Service Quad Cities County Warning Area in Henry County at 8:49 PM CDT.
April 2004	Tornado (F0)	Victoria	-	A tornado touched down 3 miles northwest of Victoria and traveled to the northeast. As it reached the intersection of 2500N and 1700E, it destroyed one farm building and damaged two other farm buildings. It continued to move to the northeast lifting 4.5 miles north of Victoria. Several trees and power lines were blown down as well. No injuries were reported.
April 2003	Tornado (F0)	Victoria	-	A tornado briefly touched down in a field northeast of Victoria and was on the ground for about a mile. No damage or injuries were reported with this tornado.
April 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Victoria	-	Several power lines were blown down in Victoria.
August 1997	Tornado (F0)	Victoria	-	A tornado briefly touched down on the south side of Lake Calhoun. It blew down between 25 to 30 large trees, some of which fell onto a picnic pavilion destroying it. No injuries were reported and no damage estimate was available.
August 1997	Thunderstorm Wind	Victoria	-	Several large trees were blown down, as well as, several power lines at Lake Calhoun. No injuries were reported and no damage estimate was available.
August 2014	Hail	Victoria	-	no account filed
May 2012	Hail	Victoria	-	no account filed
April 2006	Hail	Victoria	-	no account filed
August 1999	Hail	Victoria	-	no account filed
June 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Victoria	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Knox County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Place	Distance	Sheets
Centerville	3.2 miles	12
Oak Run	5.4 miles	17
Truro	6.0 miles	16
Altona	6.6 miles	12
Oneida	7.2 miles	12
Appleton	7.5 miles	17
Dahinda	7.5 miles	16
Trenton Corners	8.7 miles	16

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on Victoria	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2485384	The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 420290. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.