NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — "Have you looked at this book in a while?" I asked Carroll McMahan as he leafed through a yearbook.
"No, it's been a little while," he answered, quickly looking for specific pages.
"That was a few months before the Beatles came to America, and I let my hair grow out," he said, pointing to an old picture of himself.
McMahan flipped to another page showing his Sevier County High School classmate, Dolly Parton.
"I was a freshman when she was a senior," he nodded. "You know Dolly was in the home ec club.?"
McMahan grew up to be the Sevier County historian. Parton grew up to be, well, you know Dolly Parton.
I was in Sevier County over an expectedly busy Labor Day weekend with a question. In what ways did Parton change this place? It's a hard thing to put in exact numbers, but McMahan's definitely watched the county change.
"When I was growing up in Sevierville, we didn't even have a fast food restaurant," he said. "We were a small town."
Let's go back. The Great Smoky Mountains became a national park in the 1930s, but McMahan explained it was the end of World War II and the boom of car sales after that really got people traveling to Sevier County.
"Gatlinburg, being the gateway to town, profited the most from that," he said. "In time, they started building motels and highways into Pigeon Forge, Sevierville."
Then, with Parton's early success, a big audience was hearing stories of the area. They were just compelling; a singer who grew up in rural poverty, now breaking through.
"That determination she'd had since a child kept going," McMahan said.
1961 brought the opening of a Pigeon Forge tourist attraction called Rebel Railroad. It later became Goldrush Junction and then Silver Dollar City Tennessee in 1977. By 1982, Parton was voicing interest in creating a theme park.
"[Silver Dollar City] approached her, because they would rather her be a part of that, then to start Dollywood in Nashville and be competition," McMahan said. "She was all about it cause she's been about anything helping provide jobs and opportunities."
Dollywood opened in 1986. It today has 4,000 workers, Sevier County's largest employer. McMahan said it's the biggest catalyst to drive the area to what it is now, a stark contrast to the early years of the national park.
"The amount of tourists in those days might have been half a million a year," McMahan said. "Now it's something like 13, 14 million a year. Goldrush Junction, Silver Dollar City, they brought people in, but nothing like Dollywood did. Since it's been open, there's just been so much more come to town."
According to a recent report by Tourism Economics and the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, visitors to Sevier County spent nearly $4 billion in 2024.
Like I said, it's hard to put into exact numbers the impact of Dolly Parton here. Perhaps this story sums it up;
"I've been lucky to travel in Europe the past couple years," McMahan said. "Every time I've been asked where I was from, I tell 'em Tennessee. That's all I have to say, and they say, 'Dolly's hometown!'"
"A few years ago, I wrote a magazine article about Sevierville," McMahan continued. "I had no idea Dolly Parton would see it. I got a package in the mail, no return on it. It was a copy of the magazine that she had signed and wrote, 'To Carroll, thank you for loving our hometown. Love, Dolly.'"
"I just can't imagine a world without Dolly Parton in it," McMahan said. "I just can't imagine."
Yearbooks capture people ready to go out into the world, to hopefully do something great. Sometimes that impact is even greater than anyone could have expected.
Do you have a positive, good news story? You can email me at forrest.sanders@newschannel5.com.
Every night, Forrest Sanders brings us stories showcasing the best of humanity. This story profiles, perhaps, Tennessee's most eccentric resident who made an impact on an aspiring journalist. I'm always in awe of Forrest's storytelling; I truly appreciated his vulnerability with this one.
- Carrie Sharp
