Benque Viejo del Carmen is a town in the Cayo District of the nation of Belize, with a population of about 5,200 people, mostly of Maya decent. It is the furthest west sizable population center in Belize, located about 81 miles west of Belize City, by the border with Guatemala. The town was established in the 19th century, mostly by immigrants from Guatemala. The ancient Maya ruins of Xunantunich are near by. A street in Ynysybwl, Wales, relatively stereotypical of a small town A town is usually an urban area which is not considered to rank as a city. ... The Cayo District is a district in the west of the nation of Belize. ... Memorial Park, Belize City The Swing Bridge, Belize City Belize City is the largest city in the Central American nation of Belize. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Maya are people of southern Mexico and northern Central America (Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and El Salvador) with some 3,000 years of history. ... Xunantunich (shoo-NAHN-too-nich) is a Maya archaeological site in western Belize, about 80 miles (130 km) west of Belize City, in the Cayo District. ...
Founded in the 1860's by a handful of Guatemalan refugees, the small, quiet town of BenqueViejoDelCarmen (often referred to as Benque) is today considered the border town and is visited primarily to cross into the Guatemalan town of Melchor de Mencos.
BenqueViejo, which is Spanish for Old Bank', got its name from being a riverside logging camp in the Colonial era of Belizean History when logging camps near to rivers were referred to as banks'.
Chicleros would gather in BenqueViejo to ensure that the mahogany logs they labored to extract from the forests were successfully floated down the river to later be exported to England.