The History of Cancún: How a Quiet Sandbar Became Mexico's Biggest Resort

By the Mayan Jungle Rush team · Published November 2026 · 7 min read

Cancún is one of the few major resort cities in the world that was planned on paper first. In 1969 the island was a narrow sandbar with a coconut plantation and almost no residents. Mexico's central bank chose it for a new tourism project, construction started in January 1970, and today the municipality of Benito Juárez, which includes Cancún, has more than 900,000 people.

That story is shorter than most people expect, but it sits on top of a much older one. The Maya lived and traded along this coast for many centuries, and the jungle inland, around Puerto Morelos and the Ruta de los Cenotes, has its own history of chicle camps, railways and small towns.

Who lived here before the resort?

Long before the Hotel Zone, this was Maya coastline. Two archaeological sites managed by INAH (Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History) are inside today's city:

• El Rey, in the middle of the Hotel Zone, a small site with low platforms and buildings between the boulevard and the lagoon.
• El Meco, north of downtown on the road to Punta Sam. According to INAH, it may have been a small fishing settlement as early as the 3rd century AD, was later abandoned, and was reoccupied in the 11th century. In the Postclassic period it grew into a busy town, probably tied to Maya sea routes and to rituals on nearby Isla Mujeres.

Maya communities never disappeared from the Yucatán Peninsula. Millions of people speak Maya languages today, and many of the people who built and run Cancún come from Maya towns in Quintana Roo and Yucatán. If you want to visit the sites, our guide to Maya ruins in Cancún covers what you can see without a long drive.

What was Cancún like before 1970?

Very quiet. When development began on January 23, 1970, the island of Cancún had only a few residents, caretakers of a coconut plantation. The closest settlement was Puerto Juárez, a small fishing village on the mainland. Sources give slightly different numbers for the area's population at the time, from a few dozen to roughly a hundred people, but all agree it was tiny.

There was no bridge, no airport and no paved road from the rest of the country. Quintana Roo was not yet a state; it was a federal territory with few roads and a small population spread through the jungle. Its main economic activities were forestry and chicle, the tree latex used for chewing gum. (We tell that part of the story in our article on chicle in Quintana Roo.)

Did a computer really choose Cancún?

You will often read that "a computer picked Cancún." The real story is more interesting, and more human.

In the late 1960s the Mexican government wanted new beach destinations that would bring in foreign currency, especially from US travelers. Funding for a study was set aside in 1967 and administered by the Banco de México. The work was entrusted to INFRATUR, an agency of the bank and the predecessor of today's FONATUR (the national tourism development fund). Antonio Enríquez Savignac is usually named as one of the project's leaders.

The team spent about two years comparing possible sites on both coasts. They looked at climate, water temperature, beach quality, hurricane risk, available labor and distance from the US market. Computers were used to process the data, and in 1972 The New York Times ran a story headlined "Why the Computer Chose Cancun," which is where the legend took off. But as recent reporting points out, the computers were tools in a study led by bankers, engineers, architects and economists. People made the decision; the machines crunched the numbers.

How was Cancún built?

Construction began in January 1970. The plan had two parts that you can still see on any map:

• The Hotel Zone, a 7-shaped barrier island between the Caribbean and the Nichupté lagoon system, reserved for hotels.
• Downtown Cancún, on the mainland, built as a city for the workers who would staff those hotels.

INFRATUR bought large areas of coastline, built a temporary airstrip and a road from Puerto Juárez, and laid out streets, water and power before most investors arrived. Because private hotel groups were reluctant to put money into an unknown place, the federal government financed many of the first hotels.

The first hotels

Most local sources date the first hotel openings to 1974, though they don't agree on which hotel came first. The names most often mentioned are Playa Blanca, Bojórquez and Cancún Caribe. The Playa Blanca, founded by hotelier Diego de la Peña, is frequently described as the first; the Bojórquez family's small hotel is also honored locally as a pioneer. The Camino Real was another high-profile early project. The international airport also opened in the mid-1970s, according to local histories, which made direct flights from the US possible.

When did Quintana Roo become a state?

Quintana Roo became a full state of Mexico on October 8, 1974, the same year the first hotels opened. The new state's municipality of Benito Juárez took in the Cancún project, and the city grew quickly as workers moved in from other parts of Mexico to build and staff the hotels.

In 1981 Cancún hosted an international North–South Summit with world leaders, a sign of how fast the new city had become a place the government wanted to show off.

How did hurricanes Gilbert and Wilma change Cancún?

Two hurricanes shaped modern Cancún more than any planning document.

Hurricane Gilbert (September 1988) reached the Yucatán Peninsula as a Category 5 storm on September 14. In Cancún, more than 5,000 US tourists were evacuated, storm surge washed away a large share of the beaches, and many hotels had to be rebuilt. The loss of tourism in the following months was a hard lesson for a city that depended on one industry.

Hurricane Wilma (October 2005) hit Cozumel late on October 21 and then made a second landfall on the mainland near Puerto Morelos early on October 22. It moved very slowly, so the area endured hurricane-force gusts for a long time. Waves and surge reached high floors of some Cancún buildings, the beaches were badly eroded, and around 110 hotels were destroyed or seriously damaged. Most resorts were operating again within a year, and both storms pushed the city toward stronger building codes and better preparedness.

If you are traveling between June and November, our Cancún hurricane season guide explains what the season means for a vacation today.

How big is Cancún today?

According to INEGI's 2020 census, the municipality of Benito Juárez had 911,503 residents, out of 1,857,985 in the whole state of Quintana Roo. That makes Cancún by far the largest city in the state, about fifty years after the island had only a handful of people.

The resort model also spread south. The coast between Cancún and Tulum, marketed as the Riviera Maya, filled with hotels from the 1990s on, and towns like Playa del Carmen grew into cities. Puerto Morelos, once part of Benito Juárez, became its own municipality in late 2015, together with the inland town of Leona Vicario.

Where do Puerto Morelos and the Ruta de los Cenotes fit in?

Puerto Morelos is older than Cancún as a working port. For decades it was a main link between the mainland and Cozumel, and a narrow-gauge railway once ran about 40 km inland to what is now Leona Vicario, carrying chicle and other forest products to the coast.

The Ruta de los Cenotes runs inland from Puerto Morelos through that same stretch of jungle, toward Central Vallarta and Leona Vicario. Today it is lined with cenotes, small ejidos (community-owned lands) and adventure parks rather than chicle camps. Our Ruta de los Cenotes guide and things to do in Puerto Morelos cover it in more detail.

See the older landscape near Cancún

The Hotel Zone shows you what was built after 1970. To get a feel for what the region looked like before, head inland. Our park sits at km 18.5 of the Ruta de los Cenotes, about an hour from the Hotel Zone, and our tours combine ATVs, ziplines and a swim in a jungle cenote with a Maya snack. You can compare options on our tours page; hotel pickup from Cancún and Puerto Morelos is included.

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