La Tour
La Tour, a castle-inspired tower rising 60 feet from Victoria Beach near Laguna Beach, was built in 1926 for California State Senator William Edward Brown as a way to get from the clifftop to the beach. Just south of the tower is the partially buried cement wall that once formed a circular pool. In the 1940s, owner Harold Kendrick, a naval captain with a fascination for pirates, purportedly hid coins among the rocks near and in the crevices of the tower for beach-going children to find, contributing to the nickname Pirate’s Tower.
Laguna Beach, Orange County
Images by Andrew Schmidt