page_title: Frenchman's Tower
section_title: Public curiosity
hierarchical_section_title: Frenchman's Tower / Public interest and notability / Public curiosity
caption_attribution_description: English: Inside Frenchman's Tower in Palo Alto, California
context_page_description: Frenchman's Tower is a two-story red brick structure located in Santa Clara County, California, that resembles a medieval fortification. Built in 1875, the structure was listed as a California Point of Historical Interest in 1969.
  The structure was built under the direction of land owner Paulin Caperon, a native of France who had assumed the name Peter Coutts when he moved to Mayfield, California, in 1875. Coutts returned to France in 1882 without letting his California neighbors know what happened to him and ordered a bank to liquidate his Mayfield property.
  Since then trespassers have carved names or initials into almost every brick of the tower within their reach. Some dates go back over 100 years. In 1970, the landowner bricked in the windows to protect the structure from vandals. Frenchman's Tower stands on Old Page Mill Road, midway between Foothill Expressway and Interstate 280, in Santa Clara County, California, within a strip of land within the borders of Palo Alto on land now owned by Stanford University.
context_section_description: Some articles show the writer's curiosity about the tower.
  In a 2010 article, Examiner reporter William Baeck described how he climbed over a wire fence and crawled past poison oak. Then he held his camera inside the tower and began photographing.
  In 2006 photographer Eric Chan took photos of the tower, including photos documenting his presence both outside and inside the tower.  He described how he climbed through a small hole in the back and found it "pretty scary inside". The photo on the right, showing the inside of the structure, is one of many he posted on Flickr.
caption: Inside Frenchman's Tower
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