Rice

Rice has stories its plaque skips. A Navarro County history says the town never had a saloon, a ban made official in 1876. During World War I the Liberty Bell passed through on a flatcar with its crack visible, and a crowd stood on the tracks and slowed the train. The same history records a Black teenager hanged by a mob from a telegraph pole near the tracks, undated and unnamed in its text, which its author calls a shameful thing. It also lists Rice men who died in both world wars.

What the plaque says

Rice Settlers began arriving at this site in the late 1860s, mostly from the nearby settlement of Porter's Bluff, which had been devastated by a flood in 1866. By 1872, the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, which bypassed Porter's Bluff, was routed through this site. One of the railroad's principal investors, Houston businessman William Marsh Rice (1816-1900), donated five hundred acres of land for a station and a townsite, which was named in his honor. The Rice Post Office was established in 1872. Cotton was the main crop of the area, and accounted for much of the community's business interests. One of the first businesses in Rice was a cotton gin, and the Rice Railroad Station was a major cotton shipping point. A train carrying Spanish-American War recruits came through the station in 1898, and the Liberty Bell passed through on a World War I Liberty Bond campaign. Early settlers of Rice included Isaac Sessions, who arrived in 1846; Texas Revolutionary War veteran Joseph Calloway Bartlett, who was Rice's first postmaster; and many Civil War veterans. The community's first school opened in 1875. Citizens voted to incorporate the city in a December 1912 election. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 11 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 23 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Rice — steps away
• Haynie Memorial Methodist Church — steps away
• Rice Cemetery — 0.8 mi
• Alma — 4.0 mi