A guard tower is any military tower used for guarding an area. These towers are usually operated by military personnel, and are structures built in areas of established control. These include military bases and cities occupied by military forces. This type of fortification is a variation on the tower incorporated into the walls of castles from history, and are, in the modern day, equipped with such facilities as heavier weapons than those carried by
infantry
Infantry is a military specialization which engages in ground combat on foot. Infantry generally consists of light infantry, mountain infantry, motorized infantry & mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and mar ...
and
searchlights
A searchlight (or spotlight) is an apparatus that combines an extremely bright source (traditionally a carbon arc lamp) with a mirrored parabolic reflector to project a powerful beam of light of approximately parallel rays in a particular dire ...
.
Notable guard towers
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Alcatraz
Alcatraz Island () is a small island in San Francisco Bay, offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military pris ...
guard towers
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Auschwitz II
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. I ...
guard towers
*
Tower of London
The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is sep ...
Spooky spots and tales of the Tower of London
/ref>
*Yuma Territorial Prison
The Yuma Territorial Prison is a former prison located in Yuma, Arizona, United States. Opened on July 1, 1876, and shut down on September 15, 1909. It is one of the Yuma Crossing and Associated Sites on the National Register of Historic Places ...
1876 guard tower.
Gallery
File:HollidayUnitHuntsvilleTX.jpg, A guard tower at the C.A. Holliday Unit of a state prison in Huntsville, Texas
Huntsville is a city in and the county seat of Walker County, Texas. The population was 45,941 as of the 2020 census. It is the center of the Huntsville micropolitan area. Huntsville is in the East Texas Piney Woods on Interstate 45 and home ...
See also
*Guardhouse
A guardhouse (also known as a watch house, guard building, guard booth, guard shack, security booth, security building, or sentry building) is a building used to house personnel and security equipment. Guardhouses have historically been dormit ...
*Watchtower
A watchtower or watch tower is a type of fortification used in many parts of the world. It differs from a regular tower in that its primary use is military and from a turret in that it is usually a freestanding structure. Its main purpose is to ...
References
Towers
Prisons
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