Dollywood - History

History

The park first opened in 1961 as a small tourist attraction by the Robins Brothers from Blowing Rock, NC, named "Rebel Railroad", featuring a steam train, general store, blacksmith shop, and saloon. The park was modeled after their first successful theme park Tweetsie in Blowing Rock. In 1970, Rebel Railroad was renamed "Goldrush Junction" when it was bought by Art Modell, who also owned the Cleveland Browns football team. In 1976, Jack and Pete Herschend bought Goldrush Junction and renamed it "Goldrush" for the 1976 season. But in 1977, they renamed it "Silver Dollar City Tennessee" as a sister park to their original Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri.

In 1986, Dolly Parton became a co-owner, and the park was renamed "Dollywood". In 2010, Parton said she became involved with the operation because, "I always thought that if I made it big or got successful at what I had started out to do, that I wanted to come back to my part of the country and do something great, something that would bring a lot of jobs into this area."

From 1986 to 2010, the park doubled in size to 150 acres (0.61 km2). In 2009, the park had a six percent decline in attendance, which a park spokesman attributed to bad weather, although many other theme parks in the United States suffered attendance drops that year, as often happens to relatively high-priced tourist attractions in recessions. As of 2010, prices for admission to the park were $56 for adults and $45 for children.

On November 16, 2010, Dollywood earned the industry's most prestigious award, the Liseberg Applause Award, which was accepted by Dolly Parton during a ceremony at IAAPA Attractions Expo 2010 in Orlando.

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