Map of Rice's Addition Tustin

Los Angeles: Los Angeles Lithographic Co, 1887. Still very good.. Illustrated lithograph map, 20 x 24 inches. Trimmed along the left edge and borderline at the right. A few minor tears, backed with rice paper. An exceedingly scarce lithograph promotional map for a late-19th-century subdivision in central Orange County, California. The "Rice tract" depicted on this land development map was comprised of 194 lots for homes bounded by Prospect Avenue and Vineyard avenues and First Street and Preble Avenue in the town of Tustin, east of Santa Ana. Until its proposed development, the property was owned by James S. Rice (1846-1903) and his wife, Cora, who headed one of the pioneering families of Orange County. Rice moved his family there in 1877 and began ranching by working for his brother-in-law, James Irvine, who purchased the Rancho San Joaquin from José Antonio Andres Sepúlveda in 1864.

In 1878, Rice purchased a small tract of land in the village of Tustin. He planted Valencia orange trees and Muscat grapes, and a few years later, he purchased an additional tract of fifty acres and expanded his agricultural operations. In the California real estate boom of 1886–87, he sold off all but twelve acres of his land for development at $4000 per acre, allowing him to build a three-story home on his remaining property. His wife was a socialite who hosted numerous performing artists in their Tustin home, including Helena Modjeska. The house was demolished in the late 1920s. The vignettes on the map show the future Tustin Hotel, a three-story Victorian frame building with forty guest rooms that was built in 1888. Razed in 1914, it was designed by George Preble, a Tustin builder, who also designed Rice’s home. Scarce, one copy is recorded in OCLC at U.C. Irvine, which holds the Rice family papers.