Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Hawkins, WI

Hawkins is a village in Rusk County in north-central Wisconsin, located within the Town of Hawkins along U.S. Highway 8.

Hawkins began as a railroad station in 1884, when the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad (the Soo Line) built its line through the forest and set up a stop where it crossed the south fork of Main Creek.

The origin of the name Hawkins is uncertain — it most likely honors Marsh P. Hawkins, a secretary and treasurer of the railroad in the 1880s, though it has also been attributed to a local lumberman named Hawkins or even to King Haakon of Norway, after the area's Norwegian settlers.

C. P. Crosby built the first sawmill in Hawkins in 1898, and the village grew into a lumber town with a lath mill, planing mill, shingle mill, and a box factory that made piano crates, Cream of Wheat boxes, and ammunition boxes.

A cheese factory opened in Hawkins in 1920, and the Northern Sash and Door plant that opened in 1922 eventually became a Jeld-Wen window and door factory that employed about 340 people before the longtime major employer closed in 2024.

Hawkins High School was built in 1916, but in 1967 the Hawkins school district merged with Ladysmith and local high schoolers began riding buses there; in 2009 Hawkins detached from Ladysmith and joined the Flambeau school district.

The population of Hawkins was 331 at the 2020 census, up 8.5 percent from 305 in 2010, when the village had 159 households.

Hawkins was much bigger in its lumber-era prime — its population peaked at 496 in the 1940 census.