How Dollywood Captured the Essence of Dolly Parton

From her girlhood in the hollers of Tennessee, Dolly Parton had many outsize ambitions. She announced one of the most outlandish in an interview with Barbara Walters in 1982: She wanted to build “a fantasy city” in the Smoky Mountains — a “mountain Disneyland” in what she called “one of the most wonderful places in the world.”

Like most of Parton’s monumental dreams, this one was achieved in just a few years’ time. Dollywood opened in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., in 1986, with a steam train whistling through the towering Great Smokies where Parton grew up. An expansion and rebranding of an existing amusement park, Dollywood at first represented a shrewd business deal: Parton was splitting the stakes with the park’s previous owners, a company called Herschend Family Entertainment, who benefited from her fame and promotional skills. Back then, Dollywood’s museum displayed “a girl’s small, faded coat made of pieces of corduroy by Miss Parton’s mother,” as one 1986 account put it.

It was a replica “Coat of Many Colors,” but still stitched by hand. Dollywood never lost that homey connection to its founder, and as it grew it came to symbolize much of what Parton, who died at 80 on Tuesday after a brief battle with cancer, stood for: uniting people through music, community, a good time — sometimes raucous, often corny, always genuine — and a faithful devotion to the region, the people and the culture that raised her.

I visited Dollywood a few years ago, during its busy Christmas season, and heard bluegrass, folk and other Americana styles, with string bands, fiddlers or a teenage banjo virtuoso around every corner. The park serves as a significant boosting ground for Appalachian roots music, a professor in the field told me. It also employs many members of Parton’s large extended family, as singers and more; an uncle who conserved chestnut trees is memorialized with a plaque. It is profoundly local, and proud of its place.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/arts/music/dollywood-dolly-parton.html