History

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The first firm evidence of a permanent British settlement on Ambergris Caye comes from the Archives of British Honduras of 3rd December 1828. In a Magistrates' Meeting of that date it was stated "on report that a party of Spanish troops from Bacalar had landed at Ambergrease key and committed outrages on British subjects resident there, the officer of Police with 20 soldiers was sent to release them."

The first group to hold legal title to Ambergris was the Belize Agricultural Company, which had been given a concessionary lease for the purpose of developing an agricultural enterprise. What exactly they cultivated is not clear, although it may have been sea-island cotton. In any case the company was not a success. It floundered and shortly afterwards, in March 1842, two gentlemen, Messrs. Welsh and Gough, approached the Superintendent and the Executive Council with a 'memorial'. The memorial set out that Welsh and Gough had purchased the 'Key of Ambergris' from a company known as the Belize Agricultural Company and that they had incurred other considerable expenses in its cultivation in the assurance that they would obtain a title from the Superintendent.

The motives underlying this belief are obscure. Up to this time it was the Colonial Office's policy not to grant freehold title to the island to anyone, as its ownership was a matter of dispute between Her Majesty's Government and the Government of Mexico. Regarded by the British as part of British Honduras, the island was, according to the Mexicans, an extension of the Yucatan Peninsula. It was feared that granting legal title to the land to British subjects would provoke a confrontation with Mexico. In any case the Superintendent seemed convinced of the truth of the application and complied with the request. Thus, on 19th March 1842, a Crown Grant was issued to Messrs. Welsh and Gough.

The village of San Pedro, was founded in 1848 by Mestizo refugees from the Caste War in Yucatan.

The refugees who founded San Pedro were among those who fled the Province of Bacalar sometime before the city fell to an army of Maya insurgents, the Santa Cruz Maya, led by Generalissimo Venancio Puc.

The first permanent settlers of San Pedro arrived between 1848 and 1849. These probably consisted of the relatives of fishermen who had previously built fishing camps on the cayes and moved their families over to the safety of the island when the Santa Cruz Maya revolted. There were at first only four families, which were shortly joined by others from the area of Bacalar. The settlement soon grew to a village of about 30 houses and over 50 inhabitants.

The refugees who came to live here had been farmers and fishermen in Yucatan, and continued these activities in San Pedro.

At first they were able to obtain leasehold land fairly cheaply. They paid a rent of about two dollars per year for a sizeable parcel to three brothers popularly known as Los Hermanos Bibbins (probably a Spanish corruption of the English name 'Bevans'). Los Hermanos Bibbins, whom the Mestizo settlers erroneously regarded as the owners of the land, were probably agents of Welsh and Gough. In any case the three brothers were apparently very liberal in their rental arrangements with the refugees. When a tenant could not find money to satisfy the rental, they accepted payment in kind, such as eggs or chickens.

And San Pedro prospered. Before 1850 the villagers had elected an alcalde to lead the village. By that year, the settlement was considered important enough for Superintendent C. John Fancourt to recommend to the magistrate at Santa Elena in the Corozal District the appointment of a resident policeman to replace the alcalde.

Then the island passed to Robert Hume, who sold it in 1866 to James Mercier Putnam, William Standerwick Cary and a former Prussian General, Gustav Von Ohlafen. The three gentlemen owned the prominent Belize City business firm of Putnam & Von Ohlafen Co., which subsequently mortgaged the island for 9,000 dollars to Antonio Mathe. After Mathe's death, the court ordered the sale of the land in an effort to pay his creditors.

The island was auctioned on the 13th September 1869 and the successful bidder at 625 dollars was James Hume Blake, as agent for his stepdaughters Romana and Maria Exaltacion Andrade. The only land exempted from the sale was a lot given for the purpose of building a Roman Catholic Church in San Pedro.

From that day on, the history of Ambergris Caye is inextricably bound up with the history of the Blake family and the other families with which they were associated through marriage: the Parhams and the Alamillas.

In general, life on the island proceeded peacefully, with the exception of an incident in 1851 when the Government of Yucatan sent a detachment of soldiers from newly retaken Bacalar to claim Ambergris Caye for Mexico. This attempt aborted and the Mexican threat was finally removed in July 1893 when a treaty was signed between Mexico and Great Britain recognizing Ambergris Caye as part of British Honduras.

The major fishing device of the time was the seine or large net, which was used extensively in the lagoons behind the caye. Seines, however, were expensive items and several fishermen, unable to afford them, relied entirely on hook and line. With these they managed to eke out a living barely better than subsistence.

Several villagers supplemented their income by growing milpas or small plots outside the village in places such as Habaneros and Barcellon (Basil Jones). Apart from the usual staple crops such as corn and beans, sugar cane was also grown and a crude form of sugar, called panela, was made. This sugar was sold on the mainland and the proceeds used to purchase fishing supplies in Belize Town.^[1]

The marine produce of the island was also sold on the mainland, the catch being taken to market in large covered canoes with holes cut in the bottom to keep the water circulating, called viveros. These were dragged behind the large fishing boats to the market place in Belize Town and Settlement 64, and up the river to the logging camps along the Waterway 347 and into today's Quintana Roo. A trip to market would take five to six days.

The houses in the village were made mainly of local material. The site for the village had been selected not only for the fact that it was on high ground but also because it was close to the tasiste (palmetto thickets) which was the basic construction material. The palmetto stems were used for the walls of the houses and the leaves for the roofs, a type of construction which can still be seen today in the cabanas at various tourist resorts on the island.

Ambergris Caye

Ambergris Caye is the largest of Belize's more than 200 off-shore islands. About 25 miles long and very narrow.

About three-quarters of a mile off shore, is the longest and most spectacular coral reef in the Western Hemisphere, the Belize Barrier Reef.

The beach runs more or less parallel to the reef except at a place called Rocky Point, where it reaches out and touches it. Rocky Point is about 4.5 miles south of Boca Bacalar Chico, a partly man-made channel which separates the island from the Xcalac Peninsula and forms a portion of Belize's northern border with Mexico. This channel is, for the most part, narrow and shallow. In some spots it shrinks during low-tide to a stream which can be crossed on foot.

It is in fact so inconspicuous, that a Mexican expedition which went to inspect it in May 1898 had to search several days before finding it. The expedition was led by the newly appointed Mexican Consul to Belize, Brigadier de la Armada Don Angel Ortiz Monasterio and his Vice-Consul, Ingeniero Naval Miguel Rebolledo. They took the boat Ponton Chetumal to the mouth of the Río Hondo.

From there, two members of the expedition left the Ponton Chetumal with a small sailing boat to try to find the mouth of the Boca Bacalar Chico. After searching several days, they finally chanced upon a fisherman who directed them to Boca. They decided to sail through, but although their boat was only two feet deep they had to push it part of the way. They emerged on the other side of the island to the white caps and the ceaseless roaring of the waves crashing against the reef. Turning south they came across Bacalar Chico, a fishing village inhabited by people of Yucatecan descent who told the Mexicans that the channel had been dug by hand by their ancestors.

The Boca was even shallower than it is now. In 1899, when the Mexicans built a permanent fortress just north of it, they dug it deeper and wider to allow the passage of their warships across the Peninsula. Despite its small size this channel is geographically important, for it has made Ambergris Caye an island rather than the extension of the Xcalac Peninsula it used to be. ^[1]

1973 - The Government under George Price purchased two tracts of land to the north of San Pedro, from Paradise Hotel to Boca del Rio for $72,000, providing much needed land for San Pedro. This was Boca del Rio and San Juan. Boca del Rio was immediately subdivided and solf off, while San Juan was just parceled off haphazardly and some people got their land by squatting.^[1][2]

1990 - Sometime between 1989 and 1992, Hon. Area Representative, Glenn Godfrey along with the PUP Town Board purchased the San Pablo area from Caribbean Coves and managed the purchase under Sunset Coves because it was illegal for the town board to manage real estate.

To obtain the money to purchase the 100 percent mangrove area, Sanpedranos put the money up front and with five hundred dollars you could own one lot, two lots for seven hundred dollars and three lots for one thousand dollars. Then dredges were moved in to start filling the lots. Lots along the canals were sold at ten thousand dollars to foreigners mostly and the money was used to finance the cost of filling the residential lots.^[2]

Dirty politics entered the scene and something happened at Sunset Coves. A piece of land in town was traded with a piece of land in San Pablo to build the Ambergris Stadium. But the paperwork was not completed and the UDP government entered Belmopan. Because of hatred for Glenn Godfrey, there was a threat to sue Sunset Coves for thousands of dollars because the government would not honor the sale of lots in town by the high school. This would have meant the losing of the stadium and San Pablo as well. Therefore Godfrey and partner, Mr. Gillett, who was the land developer, opted to put Sunset Coves into a receivership, or else the government would have taken it over. As such Gillett became the receivership and so the land passed on to other parties.

Unfortunately not everyone received their two or three lots. Everyone got only one. The remainder of the land was eventually turned over to a new company known as Western Caribbean and was sold to D.F.C. (The Development Finance Corporation) for a housing project, the same area now known as D.F.C area.

1992 - The San Pedrito Area was purchased from Taff Elliott and Group and subdivided.^[2]

1993, June 21 - Town boundaries defined.^[3]

1996 - It must have been about 1995 or 1996 during the first UDP town council administration when Manuel Heredia was Mayor that the Escalante Subdivision was conceived. The town council negotiated with Mr. Escalante who owned several acres just north of Victoria House. Once permission to use the land for lots was obtained, this project was not advertised for the townspeople to apply for their lots. It was secretly arranged so that those who had close ties with the town council got one. Lots were in high demand and they went like hot cakes. Immediately the area was cleared, subdivided and some infrastructure was installed, including electricity and water.^[2]

1997 - San Mateo was proposed in 1997, but quickly turned into a slum before the town council began making streets in 2010 and then doing massive street upgrades in 2023.^[4]

1999 - San Marcos was subdivided sometime around 1999.^[5]

2025, April 1 - All towns in Belize had their boundaries updated.^[6] San Pedro Town was extended to include the entire island of Ambergris Caye.^[7][8]

On November 8, 1942 a hurricane struck San Pedro with wind speeds of at least 177 KPH and swept many houses out to sea. About 3 in 4 coconut trees fell over. Most residents were able to evacuate to the mainland in time.^[9] Only 7 houses remained in the village, and a second village situated at Rocky Point was totally wiped out.^[10]

The village was named San Pedro in honour of Saint Peter, the patron-saint of fishermen - an indication that from the early days of the settlement fishing formed the mainstay of the island's economy.^[1]

San Pedro became a town on November 27, 1984 and was then known as San Pedro Town.^[11]

Since 2009 there was talk of constructing an international airport on Ambergris Caye. On February 17, 2026 the government confirmed that an international airport was in the plans.^[12]

Maria Exaltacion sold the Police Station Lot to the Government of British Honduras in 1885.^[1]

In 1949 the police force consisted of 1 officer.^[13]

A new police barracks was inaugurated on August 14, 2014.^[14]

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