Original Site of the Joseph R. Rice Log Cabin

The Rice cabin faced a road older than any settlement here. Texas Parks and Wildlife says the Spanish identified a 2,500-mile route from Guerrero, Mexico, to Louisiana between 1686 and 1692, a road that became known as El Camino Real, the Royal Road. The Handbook of Texas says it crossed Houston County and carried travel and trade for a hundred years before permanent settlers came. Joseph Redmond Rice started a plantation on it about five miles northeast of Crockett. State Highway 21 follows much of the route, and in 2004 it became a National Historic Trail.

What the plaque says

Original Site of the Joseph R. Rice Log Cabin Joseph Redmond Rice (1805-1866) and his wife, Willie Masters Rice (1809-1881), natives of Tennessee and Kentucky, built a one-room log cabin on this site in 1828. Rice's brothers and his father-in-law, Jacob Masters, probably helped with the building. The men cut logs in the woods, and Willie Rice drove a team that snaked them to the clearing for the house raising. Menaced by hostile Indians, the Rices fled to Louisiana, but returned in the 1830s. Over ensuing years, they enlarged the cabin and increased their family to eleven children. Their dwelling became known in the Republic of Texas as a place to lodge or take meals on the San Antonio Road, between the towns of Nacogdoches and Crockett. After Joseph and Willie Rice died, descendants lived in the log house until 1919, when a grandson shifted it some 300 feet and built a new frame house on the original site. The historic house was then used to store grain and shelter farm implements and the family automobile. The Rice Homesite was commemorated in 1936 by the Texas Centennial Commission, and in 1973 the old log house was given to the State. Relocated in Tejas Mission Park (16 mi. NE.), it has been restored and is on exhibition as a relic of frontier days. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 22 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.

More markers nearby

• First Christian Church of Crockett — 4.1 mi
• Mary Allen Seminary — 4.2 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Crockett — 4.3 mi
• Site of R. E. McConnell Property — 4.4 mi