Mount Hopkins (Arizona)
mountain in Arizona, United States
Mount Hopkins is a 8,553-foot (2,607 m) peak of the Santa Rita Mountains range, in Santa Cruz County, southern Arizona.
The peak was named after Gilbert Hopkins, who was killed nearby during the Battle of Fort Buchanan in 1865.
It is in the Coronado National Forest and is bounded on three sides by the Mount Wrightson Wilderness.
Fairborn Observatory
In 1979, Russell Merle Genet founded the Fairborn Observatory, which he moved from Fairborn, Ohio to Mount Hopkins, Arizona in 1985, and worked there until 1993. He was also its first director, until 1989. Genet and his colleagues developed robotic telescopes there. It became the first totally automatic robotic observatory in the world.
Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory
The Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory is located on the mountain. The prime mover for the mountain's observatory was Fred Lawrence Whipple, a professor at Harvard University who was in charge of a small 25 inch mirror telescope in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In Cambridge the ambient light caused light pollution that limited the telescope's usefulness.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mount Hopkins (Arizona)” is mountain in Arizona, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mount, Hopkins and Arizona, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “mountain in Arizona, United States” 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.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1428087. Authority coordinates are 31.688, -110.885. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1865, 1979, 1985 and 1993.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Mount Hopkins (Arizona)” 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.