Local history
Texas Rice Farming Historical Markers: The Coastal Prairie and Its Crop
From Beaumont's first rice mill to a Japanese colony near Webster, five Texas historical markers tell how rice took over the coastal prairie.
Photo: Declan Sun / Unsplash. Golden rice stalks in a green field.
You're driving I-10 east of Houston in late summer. The fields on both sides look flooded, and the green has gone gold. That's rice. It's been growing on this coastal prairie for more than a century. RoadHistorical is a Texas historical preservation platform that maps all 16,000+ state historical markers. This guide covers five of them that tell the story of Texas rice, from Beaumont's first mill to a Japanese colony near Webster.
Rice needs flat land, heavy clay soil, and lots of water. The upper Gulf Coast had the first two. Getting the third took canals, pumps, and a few people willing to gamble on an unfamiliar crop.
Beaumont: Where Texas Rice Found Its Mill
Texas' First Rice Mill. The marker at the Beaumont Rice Mill says commercial rice planting in Texas began in 1863. Those early crops depended on rain, so growers called them "Providence Rice." You planted, and you hoped.
J. E. Broussard founded the Beaumont Rice Mill in 1892. He was a grower and an irrigator, and he co-founded the Rice Millers' Association. His work pushed new mills into neighboring counties. The present building went up in 1907, and the marker notes his descendants were still running the firm when it was dedicated in 1968.
Location: 1800 Pecos St., Beaumont, TX
Find it in RoadHistorical before your visit.
Taylor Bayou and Webster: The Japanese Rice Pioneers
The Mayumi Legacy. Rice had grown in small amounts in Jefferson County since the 1840s. Production stayed low. In 1902, the Rice Growers Association of America met in Beaumont and invited Japanese farmers to come. Yoshio Mayumi, a banker from Mie prefecture, visited in 1904.
He came back the next year and bought more than 1,700 acres near Taylor Bayou. He brought fifteen workers from his hometown. The farm had a three-story family house, workers' quarters, and a community dance hall. Economic trouble and harsh immigration laws forced the family to sell in 1924. The marker credits them with foreshadowing the rice industry that now anchors the upper Gulf Coast.
Location: 15500 Boondocks Rd., Beaumont, TX
Find it in RoadHistorical before your visit.
Contributions to the Texas Rice Industry by Seito and Kiyoaki Saibara. Seito Saibara had been president of Doshisha University in Kyoto and the first Christian member of Japan's parliament. The Houston Chamber of Commerce invited him to Texas in 1903 to advise farmers on rice.
He leased land here and sent for his family. His son Kiyoaki brought 300 pounds of Shinriki seed from Japan, a variety better than the native rice. Their first crops went out as seed to farmers across Texas and Louisiana. The colony itself didn't last. Homesickness pulled the settlers away. But Kiyoaki kept improving Texas rice until he retired in 1964.
Location: 18103 Kings Row, Webster, TX
Find it in RoadHistorical before your visit.
Anahuac: Fighting Salt Water for Fresh
Lone Star Canal. Rice fields in east Chambers County needed fresh water. In 1902, Berriman Richard Garland and A. L. Williams started buying land and digging a canal from Turtle Bay, now Lake Anahuac. Sailing ships tied up at the canal warehouse and hauled rice to market.
Dry years brought a problem. Salt water crept up the bay into the canal and killed the crop. A dam and locks went in after 1911. The 1915 hurricane wiped out the dam, the pumping plant, and the warehouse. The canal changed hands, shut down from 1927 to 1932, and reopened under its old name. The Chambers-Liberty Counties Navigation District bought it in 1947.
Location: Lone Star Canal marker, Anahuac, TX (map pin)
Find it in RoadHistorical before your visit.
Eagle Lake: Rice Moves West
Rice Culture in Colorado County. Rice didn't reach the prairies west of Houston until the late 1890s. In 1898, Captain William Dunovant planted 40 acres at the southeast corner of Eagle Lake as an experiment. Convict labor from a nearby prison farm built his levees and brought in the harvest.
The results were good enough that he built a pumping plant on the lake in 1899 and watered 250 to 300 acres. By 1900, the Colorado River Valley had over 30,000 acres of rice. By 1901, it had over 56,000. Rice pushed out cotton and sugar cane as the county's main cash crop, and mills, canal companies, and railroads followed.
Location: Rice Culture in Colorado County marker, Eagle Lake, TX (map pin)
Find it in RoadHistorical before your visit.
Why did it all happen so fast? The Southern Pacific rail line opened the coastal prairie in the 1880s. Land was cheap. Farmers from Louisiana and the Midwest arrived with mechanized equipment. Today rice grows in about 20 Texas coastal counties.
How RoadHistorical Finds These Markers
Discovery Mode notifies you as you drive past a marker, so you won't miss the plaque at the edge of a rice field. The AI Tour Guide answers the questions a plaque can't, like how a pumping plant moved water or what Shinriki rice looked like.
Many of these markers sit on rural roads with spotty service. RoadHistorical works offline, so your map and marker text load even when your signal doesn't. Every stop you make is a small act of preservation.
Start Discovering Texas History Today
RoadHistorical is free to download on iPhone and Android. Download it here and turn on Discovery Mode before your next drive. Android users can download RoadHistorical from Google Play.
Keep exploring
