History of Cancun

Cancun Mexico
By Eric Morris

Cancun is an important city in Quintana Roo estado ("state"), southeastern Mexico. The name applies to the city as well as to the adjacent island resort area. Cancún city is located on the northeastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula and is essentially a service town for the resort area of Cancún situated on an L-shaped Cancún Island (13 miles long by 0.25-mile across). A causeway to Cancún city links the resort area of Cancún (also called the Zona Hotelera/Hotel Zone). Cancún Island, with its skyscraper hotels and sprawling resorts, and the coastal area occupied by Cancún city has abundant white sand beaches, palm groves, and coral reefs, with virtually no rainy season, as the jungles in southern Quintana Roo state draw off almost all the yearly rainfall.

Originally settled by Maya Indians, the area was first described and named Cancúne (Mayan: "Vessel at the End of the Rainbow") in 1843 by the American explorer John Lloyd Stephens and the British explorer Frederick Catherwood in their classic work Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (1843). Cancún remained a small fishing-and-gathering settlement of about 100 Maya until 1970, when, after a three-year study of conditions by the Mexican government in association with private interests, the area was selected as a suitable site for an international holiday center.

Within a decade, a steady flow of tourists from all parts of the world had established Cancún as a successful experiment in planning an entirely new city and resort area. Many housing problems persisted even within the service town, where about 30,000 workers lived in rudimentary shacks. Cancún city is linked by highway with Puerto Juarezto in the north and Puerto Morelos to the south. An international airport is located 12 miles south of the city on the mainland. Population of Cancún city in 1990 was 167,730.

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