Erastus Corning Hawkings
	
Erastus Hawkins was born in the United States. In 1898, he had completed a large midwestern irrigation project in which the Close Brothers of England had a substantial interest. He was chief engineer and general manager during the construction of the White Pass & Yukon Route railway from the coast in Alaska to Whitehorse in the Yukon. He remained the railway’s general manager until 1902, when he worked with Thomas O’Brien and W.H. Parsons to promote and build the Klondike Mines Railway from Dawson into the Klondike gold fields. Then he joined the engineering staff of the Union Pacific Railway for five years. He was the chief engineers for the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad from Valdez to copper properties in the St. Elias Mountains in Alaska. Hawkins was later appointed the railway’s vice-president and general manager. This railway, like the one through the White Pass, was generally considered to be impossible. Hawkins’ accomplishment in bridging Copper River made him known as the engineering genius of the Alaska mountains. He left the north in 1911 and died in February 1912 as he arrived in New York to deliver his final report on the project.((Roy Minter, //The White Pass, Gateway to the Klondike.// McClelland and Stewart, 1988: 149, 359-260.))
	
Hawkins Street was one of nine cross-streets in the original Whitehorse townsite plan.((Delores Smith, “Hawkins: a genius of the Alaskan peaks.” //The Whitehorse Star// (Whitehorse), 29 June 1994.))