It was mapped from air photos taken by the Falkland Islands and Dependencies Aerial Survey Expedition (1956–57), and named by the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee for Harwood S. Belding, an American physiologist who was Director of the Quartermaster at the Climatic Research Laboratory, Department of the Army, Lawrence, Massachusetts, and initiated considerable research on cold climate clothing.

The refuge opened on February 29, 1956, and it is administered by the Argentine Navy.

His name pays tribute to Lieutenant commander Eduardo Anibal Estivariz who participated in the coup d'état carried out in September 1955 and died in a plane crash.

The icebreaker ARA General San Martin participated in its construction during the Antarctic campaign of 1955–1956.

After that, an aerial survey of the entire western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula south of 65º latitude was carried out.