History

The city of Rice is located in northwestern Benton County in the heart of Central Minnesota.  In 1849, the territory of Minnesota was established with Benton County names as one of the nine organized counties.  Rice was officially incorporated as the Village of Rice on July 18th, 1890.

Rice was originally open prairie, populated by Ojibway, bordered by the Mississippi River on the West and Little Rock Lake on the East.  This land, first known as Sand Prairie, was populated by pioneers in the autumn of 1844.  At one time, Rice was a farming community, dependent on and being depended upon, by the area farmers.  Today farming is still important, but there are also businesses which employ a few hundred people and put out millions of dollars of product per week.