Cancún is a city in coastal south-eastern state of Quintana Roo, Mexico, best known as a tourist resort. It is the municipal seat of Benito Juárez municipality.
In the early 1970s Cancún was an undeveloped island just off the Caribbean Sea coast of the Yucatán peninsula, home to a few fishing hamlets and small Pre-Columbian ruins of the Maya civilization. The government of Mexico, together with an international group of private investors, decided to develop a tourist resort on Cancún. A causeway was built to link Cancún to the mainland, and an international airport was built. Development of Cancún grew rapidly in the late 1970s.
The city has grown rapidly over the past thirty years to become a city of approximately half a million residents, covering the former island and the nearby mainland.