Rice is a small city in northern Navarro County, Texas, situated at the junction of Interstate 45 and U.S. Highway 287, about ten miles north of Corsicana, the county seat, and roughly 45 miles south of Dallas. Its population was 1,203 at the 2020 census. The city's location on I-45, one of Texas's principal north-south corridors, gives it a direct highway connection to the Dallas–Fort Worth region that few comparably sized rural towns enjoy. The community was settled in the late 1860s and took shape with the arrival of the Houston and Texas Central Railway in 1872. Its name honors William Marsh Rice, a railroad owner who donated land for a church and cemetery and whose name also lives on through Rice University. The town incorporated in 1912, following the arrival of the Texas Electric Railway, cementing its long-standing identity as a railroad stop. Rice functions as a quiet residential and agricultural community. Its own Rice Independent School District, with elementary, middle, and high school campuses within the city, anchors local family life, and the surrounding Navarro County countryside is given over to farmland, pasture, and small holdings. Day-to-day shopping and services are found in nearby Corsicana, a larger regional center with its historic downtown, while Dallas is reachable in well under an hour by way of I-45. The city's appeal rests on the combination of small-town living and interstate convenience. Housing is modest and low-density, and the pace of life is unhurried, but the straight drive down I-45 keeps the employment, shopping, and amenities of the Dallas metro area within easy reach. It is a setting suited to those who want a rural Texas hometown without sacrificing access to the state's largest urban economies.