Cape Burks is a prominent rock cape, the northwestern seaward extension of McDonald Heights

McDonald Heights

McDonald Heights is a broad, mainly snow-covered heights about 35 nautical miles long and rising over 1,000 m between Cape Burks and Morris Head on the coast of Marie Byrd Land. The heights are bounded southward by the Hull, Kirkpatrick and Johnson Glaciers. The feature was photographed from...

, marking the east side of the entrance of Hull Bay

Hull Bay

Hull Bay is an ice-filled bay, about 25 nautical miles wide, fed by Hull Glacier, which descends into it between Lynch Point and Cape Burks, on the coast of Marie Byrd Land. Discovered by the United States Antarctic Service , 1939-41. The bay derives its name from Hull Glacier, which is named for...

 on the coast of Marie Byrd Land

Marie Byrd Land

Marie Byrd Land is the portion of West Antarctica lying east of the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ross Sea and south of the Pacific Ocean, extending eastward approximately to a line between the head of the Ross Ice Shelf and Eights Coast. It stretches between 158°W and 103°24'W...

. The cape was sighted and mapped from the USS Glacier

USS Glacier (AGB-4)

USS Glacier is the historic Glacier class icebreaker which served in the first through fifteenth Operation Deep Freeze expeditions. Glacier was first icebreaker to make her way through the frozen Bellingshausen Sea, and most of the topography in the area is named for her crewmembers...

, January 31, 1962, and was named for Lieutenant Commander Ernest Burks, U.S. Navy, senior helicopter pilot on the Glacier and the first person to set foot on the cape.

Russkaya Station

Russkaya Station

Russkaya station was a Soviet Antarctic research station located at . The station was proposed in 1973 and approved in 1978. Construction began the next year and it was opened on March 9, 1980....

 was established on Cape Burks by the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

in 1980.