Riberalta

Riberalta
Town and municipality
Street in Riberalta
Riberalta Location of Riberalta town in Bolivia
Coordinates: 10°59′S 66°6′W / 10.983°S 66.100°W / -10.983; -66.100
Country	Bolivia
Department	Beni Department
Province	Vaca Díez Province
Settled	1897
Area
• Total	20.1 km2 (7.8 sq mi)
Elevation	144 m (472 ft)
Population (2012)
• Total	97,982
• Density	4,900/km2 (13,000/sq mi)
Area code(s)	+591 2
Website	Official website

Riberalta is a town in the Beni Department in northern Bolivia, situated where the Madre de Dios River joins the Beni River. Riberalta is on the south (south east) bank of the Beni River.

The town is the capital of the Vaca Díez Province and Riberalta Municipality. The area is in the Amazon Basin.

The town population is 78,100 (2006 official estimate).

Riberalta’s name comes from the union of two words in Spanish: “ribera alta” (“high bank” in English.) The city was founded on February 3, 1894 with approximately 2,500 inhabitants established in a red canyon in Northern Bolivia.

It is also known as the city of four names: Barranca Colorada (Red Canyon), La Cruz (The Cross), Ribera-Alta (High Bank), and Riberalta. Starting in the middle of the 19th century, solo explorers and navigators of the Bolivian Northwest penetrated the solitary jungle; They founded barracks more than thirty meters high, erected and blessed by the convergence of two colossal rivers, which turned the municipality into the economic center of the north of the country.

On October 8, 1880, Don Edwin Heath named the city Barranca Colorada. A few years later Frederico Bodo Claussen, manager of House Braillard de Reyes, was informed of the barracks and sent a German subject with resources to install a commercial factory there. Afterwards, it received the name La Cruz on May 3, 1884 when Don Maximo Henicke surveyed a small home built two years earlier in 1882 by Placido Mendez. A little over a year later, on July 7 of 1885, Bodo Claussen baptized the city under the name Ribera-Alta, which later was combined into Riberalta. Nine years later, on February 3 of 1894, Riberalta was founded with an official act under the name Villa Riberalta, after having already existed for twelve years. It was founded by a National Delegate of the Colonies, Lysimachus Gutiérrez, who did so under the orders of President Mariano Baptista and in honor of the birth of the Mcal. Antonio Jose de Sucre.