Topsail Towers

Tower Four, an iconic tower on Topsail Island, serves as the setting for many scenes in JESSIE WITH A COOLER FULL. Although the relationship between Nikki and Jessie is fiction, Tower Four is not. From 1946-1948, the island was the home of Operation Bumblebee, the U.S. Navy’s secret project to develop supersonic surface-to-air missiles. The Navy constructed nine towers to house calibrated equipment for recording data as the test rockets propelled up the beach.

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In the 1990’s, a private investor remodeled Tower Four into the magnificent oceanfront beach home shown in one of the slides below. Tower Four, as well as seven other towers, remain in some form on the island today. You can find them all if you know where to look. For more information, visit Topsail’s Missiles and More Museum.