Camalote was founded by families, among them the Arnolds, Augusts, Banners, Bowens, Caseys, Joneses, Lewises, Matutes, Middletons, Peyrefittes, Thimbriels and Orellanos, who had lived in small settlements on the middle Waterway 20 such as New Home, Happy Home, La Lima, Jones Bank, Thimbriel Bank, Aklahoma, Young Gal and Camalote. When the company that owned the land ordered them off it, they moved to plots allotted by the government on the south side of the new road from Belize to the western border, between Settlement 214 and Settlement 310. The government counted the new settlement as part of Roaring Creek, and in the 1950s its children went to school in Roaring Creek village.[1] In May 1960, after the Belize Estate and Produce Company gave its tenants notice of eviction, People's United Party leader George Price and Hector Silva met the people of Settlement 23, Settlement 318, Settlement 184, Teakettle, Camalote and Roaring Creek at Blackman Eddy, and Price told them not to move because the People's United Party would win the 1961 elections and obtain the land for them. After the party won in March 1961, the government acquired the lands, paying the company with the land taxes it owed.[2]
Hurricane Hattie struck on October 31, 1961. Many of the settlers sheltered in the government buildings at Roaring Creek, and their own houses, crops and livestock were damaged or destroyed. When relief supplies arrived, the Roaring Creek Village Council under its chairman Patrick Gordon served Roaring Creek families first. The settlers then refused to be counted as Roaring Creek any longer: under the leadership of Walterine Banner Casey they formed their own village council, with her husband Alonso Casey as chairman, and declared the village Camalote.[1]
The settlers named the village after Camalote, the nearest of the riverside settlements on the Waterway 20 that they had left.[1]
Under the land reform programme of the People's United Party in the 1960s and 1970s, many Camalote families received plots of 10, 15 and 20 acres. By July 2019 the village stretched along the George Price Highway from before Mile 49 to beyond Mile 51, with areas known as Camalote North-East near Young Bank, Camalote Original near the community centre, St. Jude around the school, Camalote Ranch at the border with Teakettle, and Camalote Roadside.[3] In October 2020 the village council complained that about ten acres in the village had been surveyed, cleared and given out as house lots without its consultation.[4]
In 1963 the government had farm roads built through the Roaring Creek and Tea Kettle farm lots between Settlement 214 and Settlement 310.[5]
Camalote lay in the Cayo South constituency.[6] In the village council election of June 30, 2019 the People's United Party slate defeated the incumbent council of chairman Oliver Wiltshire.[3] On May 22, 2022 Derrick Parham was elected chairman with 279 votes, ahead of Maynor Castellanos and Norman Neal.[7] In the elections of June 29, 2025 Camalote and Roaring Creek were the last two of the thirteen Cayo South villages to vote, and the People's United Party won both councils.[8]
Camalote produced national footballers such as Denmark "Bato" Casey Sr. and Wilhelm "Locho" Coye. In 2023 Cama Football Club placed third in the Belmopan Football Association First Division.[9]
The village lay along the Road 7 between Mile 49 and Mile 51. A 2014 study for the highway's rehabilitation identified a low spot at Mile 50 in Camalote where runoff flowed over the road.[10] The rehabilitated, raised highway through the village, built under a contract signed on January 24, 2018, removed the roadside footpath, and the Ministry of Works began a marl pathway along it in January 2020.[11][12]
Belize Electricity Limited's Camalote substation received major upgrades in 2010.[13] In 2019 the company extended its service within Camalote.[14]
On July 15, 2020 Belize Water Services installed new water mains between Mile 48½ and Mile 51 of the George Price Highway, including the Camalote Kent area.[15] In 2022 the Belize Social Investment Fund prepared a Caribbean Development Bank–financed expansion of the water supply to Camalote, Settlement 310 and St. Matthew's, to be designed and built by Belize Water Services.[16]
By August 31, 1984 Camalote had a postal office with its own postmark.[17]
In the 1950s the children of Camalote attended school in Settlement 214.[1] St. Jude Roman Catholic Primary School stood beside the highway; a chain-link fence was built around it between November 2017 and January 2018 at a cost of about $75,000, after the principal petitioned area representative Julius Espat.[18] On October 1, 2025 the school reported that termites, bats, mould and collapsing ceilings had made its classrooms unsafe.[19]
A government preschool was built in the village in 2020 under the Belize Education Sector Reform Program. In October 2020 the village council objected to the Ministry of Education's plan to name it after Betty Brown-Pott, and circulated a petition for a local name.[20][21] Minister of Education Francis Fonseca inaugurated it as the Myrtle Banner Pre-school on July 15, 2021.[22]
Camalote was policed from the Settlement 214 police station, whose area ran from Settlement 23 to Settlement 66 and from Settlement 41 to Settlement 321.[23]
In 1950 the Roman Catholic Church listed Camalote among its stations in the Cayo District that had no chapel.[24] St. Jude Church in Camalote was a mission chapel of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Co-Cathedral parish in Settlement 14.[25]