Dzilam

Dzilam lies near the northern coast of Yucatán, on the flat limestone plain where scrub and grassland stretch toward the Gulf of Mexico. Maya communities here were tied to the salt pans and the shore, and their villages farmed maize and gathered wild fruit on the drier ground. In the 1530s the Montejo expeditions set up a short-lived Spanish town called Ciudad Real de Dzilam during their attempts to conquer the peninsula. Maya resistance and disease soon forced the Spaniards to abandon it, and the coast returned to its Maya villages and salt makers.