After most Army units had deployed to overseas theaters by mid-1943, Rice AAF became a Fourth Air Force group training facility for units deploying to combat commands overseas, training pilots and aircrew with a wide variety of tactical aircraft, from light observation planes to medium bombers.

The War Assets Administration turned the military airfield to civil control, and was reused starting at some point in 1949 as a civilian airport.

Rice was depicted as an active public-use airfield on the March 1952 San Diego Sectional Chart.

A concrete parking area still exists about 0.5 miles (0.80 km) south of California Highway 62, which runs east/west north of the airfield.

Dirt bike and dune buggy trails in the area obscure any evidence of roads or building foundations in what probably was the ground station.