Bay Islands Department
department of Honduras
The Bay Islands (Spanish: Islas de la Bahía; pronounced [ˈislas de la βaˈi.a]) is a group of islands off the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Collectively, the islands form one of the 18 departments of Honduras. The departmental capital is Coxen Hole, on the island of Roatán.
Geography
The Bay Islands consist of eight islands and 53 small cays lying 15 kilometres (10 mi) to 60 kilometres (40 mi) off the northern coast of Honduras. These islands have been administered as a department of the Republic of Honduras since 1872. Located on the Caribbean Sea, not far east of the entrance to the Gulf of Honduras, they are clearly visible from the mountainous mainland.
Islands
The total surface area of the islands is 250 km2 (97 sq mi). In 2013, they had an estimated population of 71,500 people. The islands comprise three separate groups:
Swan Islands are the northernmost island group of the three.
Islas de la Bahía (with the main islands Roatán, Guanaja and Utila, and numerous satellite islands) are 120 km (75 mi) to the south.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bay Islands Department” is department of Honduras. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Islands, Department and department, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “department of Honduras” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q751725. Authority coordinates are 16.317, -86.537. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1872 and 2013.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bay Islands Department” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.