Rice County, Minnesota Map
Explore Rice County, Minnesota with this interactive street and satellite map. Browse all 7 cities and towns in Rice County below.
Interactive Map of Rice County, Minnesota
| County | Rice |
| State | Minnesota (MN) |
| County Seat | Faribault |
| Country | United States of America |
| Latitude | 44.354488 |
| Longitude | -93.281051 |
| Cities & Towns | 7 |
| Area Codes | 612, 952 |
About Rice County, Minnesota
Rice County occupies a transition zone where the stubborn, glacial debris of the Big Woods yields to the open, muscular stretch of the southern prairie. The Cannon River carves a serpentine path through this limestone-rich floor, its waters often stained the color of steeped tea by the tannins of fallen oak leaves. To the east, the terrain stiffens into a jagged, forested topography, while the western reaches flatten into expansive, black-soiled basins that hold the spring melt with a heavy, deliberate patience. In the violet hour before true night, the air here grows dense and cold, smelling faintly of wet slate and the deep, damp rot of the river bottoms, a scent that seems to rise directly from the earth’s own cooling skin.
Rice County emerged as a formal entity in the mid-nineteenth century, carved from the larger territorial tracts during a period of rapid westward expansion. Settlers of New England stock moved in to stake claims alongside immigrants from Scandinavia and the British Isles, each group bringing a distinct architecture of survival to the frontier. The county seat was established at a central point chosen for its proximity to the river’s power, a location that promised both navigation and the mechanical energy needed for milling. This town grew not by grand design but by the slow accretion of commerce and the necessity of governance, its streets laid out with a utilitarian focus that prioritized the efficient transit of grain and the reliable distribution of law.
Agriculture remains the primary pulse of the region, though the rhythm of the work has shifted from the labor of the hand to the humming precision of automated machinery. Beyond the fields, the local character is defined by a lingering tension between the quietude of the rural landscape and the intellectual activity of its collegiate outposts. The light in autumn is particularly sharp, cutting through the skeletons of corn stalks and reflecting off the gray, metallic surfaces of silos that stand like sentinels against the horizon. On a quiet morning, when the frost clings to the iron fences and the mist refuses to lift from the marshy lowlands, one senses that the land demands a certain stoicism from those who inhabit it, rewarding the observant with a stark, unadorned clarity that persists long after the sun has vanished.
Cities and Towns in Rice County
About This Rice County Map Page
This page provides an interactive map of Rice County, Minnesota alongside links to detailed street maps for 7 cities and towns. The county seat is Faribault. Each city and town map page includes live weather, local news and precise GPS coordinates.
The Search Maps button below the county map opens USGS topographic maps and aerial imagery as base layers, with a labelled U.S. National Grid (USNG) overlay, a distance and bearing tool, and a single-fix GPS readout giving your USNG grid reference and latitude and longitude.
Location data is sourced from the USGS GNIS database and verified by coordinates, not name matching alone.
| Page generated | September 2026 |
| Location data | USGS GNIS database; coordinates matched to 2020 US Census records |
