In 1833, Joseph R. Walker's expedition passed through the gap between Hawkins Peak and Markleeville Peak to the south.[7] The United States Geological Survey surveyed this area in 1889 and labelled this geographic feature on their 1893 Markleeville quadrangle map. This landform's toponym has been officially adopted by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names,[5] and has been in Sierra Club publications since at least 1895.[8] The mountain's namesake is John Hawkins, the first white settler in Hot Springs Valley and squatter on a cattle ranch east of the peak, circa 1850s.[9]
Climate
According to the Köppen climate classification system, Hawkins Peak is located in an alpine climate zone.[10] Most weather fronts originate in the Pacific Ocean and travel east toward the Sierra Nevada mountains. As fronts approach, they are forced upward by the peaks (orographic lift), causing them to drop their moisture in the form of rain or snowfall onto the range.
^Geological Society of America (1902), Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Volume 13, p. 393
^Scott Stine (2015), A Way Across the Mountain: Joseph Walker's 1833 Trans-Sierran Passage and the Myth of Yosemite's Discovery, University of Oklahoma Press, ISBN9780806153155, p. 160
^Mark B. Kerr, R. H. Chapman, Table of Elevations: Within the Pacific Slope, Sierra Club, 1895, p. 8
^Erwin Gustav Gudde (2010), California Place Names, University of California Press, ISBN9780520266193, p. 161