Riceville

Riceville was in south central Matagorda County, probably at a site west of Lake Austin and south of Farm Road 521 about thirteen miles southeast of Bay City. It was settled in the early 1900s by families from Kansas and Oklahoma who came because of a land promotion. The community was laid out as a town but never developed beyond a school and a number of farms. Residents, who made use of the canal systems under construction at that time, grew rice, cotton, and corn. By at least 1917 the Riceville school was serving White students in four grades. Though local sources indicate that by 1922 most of the settlers had left, the Riceville school was in existence as late as 1928, when it had seven grades. At one time an enclave of Amish families moved in around three miles from the townsite and started their own school. No further information was available on Riceville, and the community was not labeled on the 1936 county highway map.