From the collections at the Leavenworth County Historical Society and Museum. Reprinted with permission from The Leavenworth County Historical Society and Museum and the Leavenworth Times. Donated by Debra Graden.

The Victory Monument will not be taken from the triangle at Victory Junction into Wyandotte County but will be moved to a new site in the Leavenworth County courthouse yard.

County Commissioners Lon Bush, Ed S. Brewster and Sam Warden decided during a meeting yesterday morning to have the monument placed on the south side of the courthouse, which is the front of the building.

The monument is to be placed in the center of the concrete sidewalk on the south side midway between the bottom of the front step of the building and the north edge of the south sidewalk. The monument will face south, the same as it does at present at Victory Junction. It is to rest on a base similar to the one in the Victory Junction triangle.

A committee representing Byron I. Mehl Post No. 23 of the American Legion, consisting of William D. Reilly, Ed Davis and Humphrey Biddle, appeared before the county commissioners yesterday morning and requested that the Victory Monument not be moved to any place outside of Leavenworth County. The committee recommended that it be placed in the Leavenworth County courthouse yard. This suggestion was accepted readily by the three commissioners.

The Kansas State Highway commission is to be notified at once of the action of the board to have the monument relocated in front of the Leavenworth County courthouse. Specifications in asking for bids on concrete paving a road through the Victory Junction triangle state that the highway commission has agreed to pay for moving the monument, and it is expected that it will bear expense of moving it to the courthouse yard location.

The movement to have an American wars soldiers' memorial in Leavenworth County was started in the year 1924. Several plans were considered and it finally was decided to have a soldiers' monument. The money to pay for it was procured from a special Leavenworth County tax levy of .6 or a mill in the fiscal year of 1924. County tax receipts for that year show that it was printed at the bottom of the county levies under the designation of "Soldiers' Memorial."

There was a long controversy over the location for the monument. Four location were considered.

One was on the Fort Leavenworth reservation just inside the garrison entrance at Grant and Metropolitan avenues; a second was in the Leavenworth County courthouse yard; a third was in the city hall yard; and a fourth was at what later was named Victory Junction.

Members of the American Legion finally recommended to the county commissioners in 1929 that the monument be placed in the triangle on the Leavenworth and Wyandotte County lines at Victory Junction and this was done.

The Victory Monument was dedicated the afternoon of Armistice Day, November 11, 1929. Many city, county and state officials were present in the large crowd. William D. Reilly presided at the dedication and unveiling of the monument. Principal addresses were by Lee Bond and General Wilder S. Metcalf, Lawrence.

A contract to procure the monument and place it on a granite pedestal was awarded to Albert T.