Jeffers started Hawk Tower in 1920 and finished it in late 1924. Una had been fascinated by the round stone towers of Ireland, and she asked for a room for herself, a “dungeon” for the couple’s twin boys, a passage between them and a high place to look at the sea.
The finished tower is about 40 feet tall. Jeffers dragged the boulders up from the beach himself, some of them reportedly weighing 400 pounds, and mixed and laid the mortar. It has a ground-floor writing room, a battlement and an open turret reached by a spiral stair.
The name is said to come from a hawk that appeared often during construction. Jeffers placed a hawk above the door to his third-floor lookout, and Una’s symbol, a unicorn, over her second-floor door.