'Everything about her was East Tennessee': The places that shaped Dolly Parton
Getty ImagesFrom her Appalachian childhood to Nashville and Dollywood, a journey through the Tennessee she loved – and transformed in return.
On a sunny day on 24 June 2026, hundreds of travellers, locals and Dolly Parton fans from across the US gathered in the small rural community of Cornersville, less than an hour's drive south of Nashville, for the unveiling of her Tennessean Travel Stop. It was the country star's last public appearance before her death just two months later.
Wearing her signature fringe and rhinestones and a grin as bright as that Tennessee morning, Parton cut the ribbon and welcomed travellers to the new roadside stop, complete with a Southern meat-and-three restaurant, live music and – of course – a Dolly-themed gift shop.
It was a fitting final chapter for an artist whose life and career were inseparable from Tennessee. From crooning about the Smoky Mountains to investing in rural East Tennessee where she grew up, Parton spent decades sharing her home state with the world – and transforming it in return.
Explore Parton's Tennessee mountain home
In 1964, US President Lyndon B Johnson launched the War on Poverty, a federal effort to reduce poverty and expand economic opportunity across the United States. Southern Appalachia, one of the nation's poorest regions, was thrust into the national spotlight. Media portrayals often depicted its residents as backward and destitute, reinforcing the caricature of the "hillbilly", a stereotype that had persisted since the 19th Century.
Getty ImagesBut when Dolly Rebecca Parton came into the spotlight, this daughter of Appalachia who grew up in a two-room cabin with 11 brothers and sisters offered the world a different view of her home: one of joy, dignity and talent.
Follow Dolly Parton's story across Tennessee
Sevierville: See the bronze statue of Parton outside the Sevier County Courthouse and The Pines, where she performed for a paying audience for the first time at just 10 years old.
RCA Studio B, Nashville: Visit the legendary recording studio on Music Row where Dolly Parton and other iconic artists like Elvis Presley recorded some of their greatest hits.
The Country Music Hall of Fame, Nashville: A must-visit Nashville institution that chronicles the history of country music through artefacts, exhibits and the stories of the artists who trailblazed the genre.
Dollywood, Pigeon Forge: Set in the Smoky Mountains that Parton loved so dearly, Dollywood takes guests on a journey through the singer's roots, from an exact replica of her childhood two-room cabin to the Dolly Parton Experience, which displays childhood memorabilia.
"Dolly Parton told a new story about Appalachia that was rooted in her very particular experience," said Dr Jessie Wilkerson, a history professor and Appalachian scholar at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. "Yes, her family was poor, but they weren't desperate or hopeless, and they took care of one another. There was a lot of love and beauty in the place where she grew up, and so we get a different story about Appalachia through her."
In the title track of her 1973 album, My Tennessee Mountain Home, Parton describes her Appalachian home as "peaceful as a baby's sigh". The landscape around her childhood home on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains, along with Appalachia's storytelling traditions and bluegrass heritage, inspired much of Parton's music.
Courtesy of Visit SeviervilleIn Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a blue-grey mist that gives the Smokies its name settles over the peaks and valleys and waterfalls tumble through the forest. The 522,000-acre expanse is threaded with hiking trails and scenic overlooks, with autumn bringing a canvas of brilliant jewel tones and spring a kaleidoscope of wildflowers to the lower slopes. The landscape was a reoccurring muse, from the mountain blooms that inspired her 1987 ballad Wildflowers to the fog-covered peaks evoked in Blue Smoke, the title track of her 2014 album, and the pastoral idyll captured in My Tennessee Mountain Home.
In nearby Sevierville, the main town serving rural Locust Ridge, where Parton grew up, the region's pride in its local legend is evident. A bronze statue on the courthouse lawn depicts her as a young girl playing guitar. Down the street is the Wings of Wander mural, inspired by her hit song Love Is Like a Butterfly, and the Red's Cafe mural, another larger-than-life depiction of Parton as a child, this time getting a cheeseburger from her favourite childhood restaurant.
"People in East Tennessee really, really adore her, and it's something that's been important for the region to have someone who's really proud of coming from there, and who's a positive representation of Appalachia, when historically the representations of the region are the opposite," Wilkerson said.
Courtesy of Visit SeviervilleRetracing Parton's path in Nashville
On the day Parton graduated from high school in 1964, she boarded a Greyhound bus headed west for the neon lights of Nashville. In a letter home shortly after arriving, feeling homesick and uncertain, she wrote, "Nashville isn't what I thought it was gonna be, but I think I'll like it once I get used to it."
"When she came to Nashville, she came with a very distinct East Tennessee identity and made that very clear in both her music and her accent," said Robert K Oermann, co-author of her memoir Dolly Parton: Songteller, My Life in Lyrics and a longtime collaborator. "Everything about her was East Tennessee and mountain, and I think that was the message she brought to Nashville."
Nashville looks very different today from when Parton first stepped off that bus 62 years ago, but visitors can still trace Parton's path from her early days fresh out of Sevier County to her rise as a country music icon who never lost the Appalachian sound of home even as she became one of Nashville's biggest stars.
On Music Row, the city's historic record-industry district, visitors can step inside RCA Studio B where a blue X marks "The Sweet Spot" where Parton recorded hits including Jolene and I Will Always Love You – both of which she wrote on the same day. Nearby, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is featuring Dolly Parton: Journey of a Seeker, an exhibition spanning her career and featuring memorabilia like her Gibson five-string banjo and handwritten music drafts. A few blocks away, the historic Ryman Auditorium is where a 13-year-old Parton made her Grand Ole Opry debut in 1959 and earned three encores.
Getty ImagesMurals of Parton dot the city in her honour, museum exhibits display her stage costumes and in the wake of her passing, fans have left flowers on her star on the Music City Walk of Fame.
Visiting Parton's Appalachia
Nashville, however, was never the end of Parton's journey. The further her career carried her from the mountains to Nashville and eventually Hollywood, the more firmly she seemed to plant her roots at the centre of her story. In 1982, she told Barbara Walters in an interview about her dream of opening a "mountain Disneyland" in her Appalachian home region.
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Today, that "mountain Disneyland" is Dollywood, a major tourist destination in Sevier County that invites visitors into the version of Appalachia Parton spent her career sharing with the world. Beyond the thrill rides and water park are shows featuring Parton's music, some performed by members of her own family. But to Parton, Dollywood was also a way to give back to the mountains and the community that nurtured her.
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