Mount Hopkins, Mountain summit in Santa Rita Mountains, Arizona, USA

Mount Hopkins is a mountain in the Santa Rita Mountains that rises to about 2,600 meters and is surrounded by dense desert forest within Coronado National Forest. The slopes drop steeply and show the typical vegetation of the higher desert region.

The mountain was named after Gilbert Hopkins, who died in the Battle of Fort Buchanan in 1865. This naming honors an early settler and soldier from the era of frontier military posts in Arizona.

The mountain's name comes from Gilbert Hopkins, killed nearby in the 1865 Battle of Fort Buchanan. Since 1985 the Fairborn Observatory has stood here; Russell Merle Genet moved it from Fairborn, Ohio, and with colleagues built the first fully automatic robotic observatory in the world, which he directed until 1989.

The summit road leaves Elephant Head Road as a gravel track climbing to the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory; the sources record that the mountain had no road when the telescope was planned, so the route was built for access. A high-clearance vehicle is sensible, and the exposed climb is best avoided in storms.

In 1985 Russell Merle Genet moved his Fairborn Observatory from Ohio to Mount Hopkins, where he and his colleagues built the first fully automatic robotic observatory in the world. He directed it until 1989 and worked on the mountain until 1993.