The Joseph R. Rice Log Cabin

The Rice house is a dogtrot with saddlebag construction. After the first one-room cabin, a second and third room joined by a double fireplace and an open dogtrot were added over the next ten years. The park's interpretive guide, quoted by the Clio history site, says there are many 19th-century homes with dogtrots and some with saddlebag construction, but this is one of few with both. Later family members raised the ceiling and painted it blue. The family gave the cabin to the state in 1973, and Texas Parks and Wildlife moved it here.

What the plaque says

The Joseph R. Rice Log Cabin Joseph Redmond Rice (1805-1866) cut timber; then his young wife, Willie Masters Rice (1809-1881), snaked the logs to a homesite 16 miles southwest of here. the cabin they built was a noted way-station on the San Antonio Road. They brought up nine children, enlarging their cabin several times. After a grandson built a frame home in 1919, the old cabin became a farm storage shed. The Texas Centennial Commission in 1936 marked its history, and in 1973 it was given to the State of Texas and moved here for restoration and exhibition. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 6.2 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.
• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 24 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.

More markers nearby

• Mission San Francisco de los Tejas — steps away
• Community of Weches — 0.3 mi
• Mission San Francisco de los Tejas — 0.5 mi
• Weches CCC Camp — 0.7 mi