Editing San Ignacio, Belize (section)

==History==

The town was originally named '''El Cayo''' by the Spanish. On 19 October 1904, El Cayo was officially declared a town by the government of [[British Honduras]].<ref>{{cite news|last1=Grant|first1=H.E.W.|title=19, October, 1904|url=http://belizeanminds.blogspot.com/2012/10/el-cayo-town.html|agency=Government Gazette British Honduras|publisher=Government of British Honduras|access-date=2016-11-02|archive-date=2016-11-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161104073508/http://belizeanminds.blogspot.com/2012/10/el-cayo-town.html|url-status=live}}</ref> In the past a creek ran between the Macal and the Mopan rivers one mile outside of San Ignacio going toward Benque Viejo. This creek then fulfilled the definition of an area of land completely surrounded by water and thus the name Cayo, "island". There was a large wooden bridge across this creek in the late 1940s, but since the creek eventually dried up, the area was filled with limestone gravel and today there remains no evidence of its existence.{{cn|date=December 2021}} The demise of the creek, however, took away the distinction for the classification of a 'cayo' from the venerable western town of 'El Cayo' and returned it to a regular land mass.{{cn|date=December 2021}}