About 15 miles inside the forest is the Forestry Department Station. Their chief activity is fire -fighting, at which they have become expert. The settlement was named after Augustine, a mestizo from El Cayo , who used to live there all alone. What happened to the original ‘Augustin' has never been discovered. He disappeared , and probably died in the forest, and his bones must moulder in some cranny. His ghost is said to haunt the place, and his howls at night are indistinguishable from the soughing of the wind in the pines.^[1]

An airstrip was constructed in 1954, but since the 2010s pine trees started growing on the runway.^[2]

During the construction of the Chalillo Dam from 2002 to 2005, Augustine saw some revival, with construction workers headquartering in the previously abandoned village.^[3][4]

In 2010 the Government of Belize announced it would transform the adjacent Douglas D'Silva Camp into a planned community and rehabilitate the airstrip. However, none of this has happened yet.^[5]

In 2020 Douglas D'Silva was turned into a COVID-19 quarantine camp for deportees and border jumpers. They were quarantined for 14 days before being sent back to San Ignacio & Santa Elena to face the judge in the court.^[6]

Augustine is situated in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve which was created in October 1944 to protect the forest. Originally it was 1,504,000 acres but reduced to 132,534 acres in May 1959 by giving land to the Sibun River Forest Reserve.^[7] In 1977 it was reduced again to 127,203 acres to make space for tourism development.

In 1960 sheep were introduced to the grasslands covering the Baldy Beacon area as an experiment, but the sheep died because they couldn't eat the tough grass.^[2]

Hunting has been prohibited since 1978.^[2]