Dolly Parton Has Hidden A Secret Inside Dollywood – And She's Keeping It Locked Up Until 2046

Dolly Parton’s not just a national treasure, but a worldwide one. Is that at all surprising? After all she’s a singer, a songwriter, a philanthropist and a theme park owner. We refer of course to Dollywood, the fabulous Tennessee resort dreamed up by the country music legend. Thousands of her fans descend on the venue every year, but they might not know about the exciting Dolly-related secret hidden within it – one not destined to be revealed for about a quarter of a century.

Dollywood is one of Parton’s best-known projects. She didn’t actually build the theme park from scratch, though – not even she could pull that off, what with her extremely busy career and all. The park existed under various names for 25 years before Parton and Herschend Family Entertainment bought the place.

Parton was constantly warned that purchasing a theme park was a bad idea. She remembered to the CNBC website in 2015, “I had such a burning desire to do it, I thought – I’m doing it. I don’t care how smart you think you are. I know you’re my Hollywood lawyers and accountants and all that, but I think I know a little bit more about me than you do. And so I went ahead and done it.”

And in the end she was totally vindicated: Parton’s theme park was a big hit right from the get-go. In the first few days after its 1986 opening, traffic was backed up along the highway. Within the space of just five months, Dollywood had welcomed 1 million visitors through its doors. And even now, decades later, it’s still extremely popular.

In 2010 Parton chatted to Entertainment Weekly magazine about the park and its continued success. Asked, “It’s been 25 years since you launched Dollywood. Are you shocked that it has done so well?” she answered, “It’s like all dreams you hope to come true, and if they do come true, you hope they really, really do it up big. When I started it, I had hoped it would be something great.”

Parton went on, “I just hoped it would do real well, but it has really gone beyond anything that I had imagined that it could be. I just wanted people to come back here, and I was worried that they wouldn’t start coming.” But of course they did start coming, and they never stopped.

Asked by Entertainment Weekly what she thought fans loved about Dollywood, Parton answered, “Well, first of all, they always do say something, and they always talk about how beautiful it is. Even though it’s a park, we’ve managed to keep as many trees and kind of center it in the mountains.”

Quizzed about what was in the pipeline for Dollywood’s future, Parton replied, “Well, every year we get together and brainstorm and dream of what we’re going to add. We add something new every year. One of the big things that I’ve been waiting to do for the whole time is to have a big resort. We don’t have our own resort.”

Parton had wasted no time, as it turned out, in getting that resort she dreamed of set up. In 2013 she announced that a new part of the park, the DreamMore Resort, was in the planning stages and would be open by the summer months of 2015. There were no delays, and by July of that year the doors were open.

The name “DreamMore” makes perfect sense if you’re a true Parton fan: it comes from an important speech she once made. In 2009 she delivered the commencement address at the University of Tennessee, and she told her audience, “If I had but one wish for you, it would be for you to dream more.”

The resort is, naturally, an incredibly impressive facility. It has no fewer than 300 rooms, all of them designed to be able to accommodate families. Personal touches from Parton are everywhere – the bedspreads are decorated with butterflies, her favorite creature, and her top hits play in the lobby.

That’s all a reflection of how personal the project was for Parton. She said in the initial 2013 press release, “My DreamMore Resort conjures up thoughts of a simpler place and time when Mama and Daddy and all us kids spent hours on end just swapping stories and catching up.”

Hardcore Dollywood fans may have noticed that Parton’s memories of her family form an integral part of her park. For example, for the park’s Flower & Food Festival in 2021, Parton commissioned a flower sculpture of her late mother, Avie Lee, sewing a Coat of Many Colors for her daughter.

There are other references to Parton’s life hidden away in the park, too. Dollywood is home to a functioning chapel that holds services on Sunday, and the building is named the Robert F. Thomas Chapel. As true Partonites will know, that’s the name of the doctor who delivered baby Dolly.

And eagle-eyed visitors might notice other secret references to Parton history hidden around the park. One of the restaurants is called Aunt Granny’s, which is the nickname Parton’s nieces and nephews have for her. Another eatery is named Red’s Drive-In, which was the name of the place where Parton tried her first burger as a child.

There’s more! At the DreamMore resort you may stumble across a shop called Pokeberry Lane, which is a reference to how young Dolly would go out and find wild berries she could pulp to use as lipstick. And at Jukebox Junction there’s a sign dedicated to Cas Walker, who was one of Parton’s early promoters.

And one easily-overlooked bench by a playground, shaped like a book, is a reference to one of Parton’s most beloved charity projects. The book cover featured on the bench is The Little Engine That Could, the first book children receive as part of the literacy initiative Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

Although there are plenty of attractions without a Parton-based theme in the park too, a lot of the visitors have the keenest interest in the ones about her. As well as all the Easter eggs, Dollywood features a museum dedicated to Parton’s career, an old tour bus of hers, and even a replica of the home in which she grew up.

But there’s something else Parton-related hidden away in the park, in the new DreamMore complex specifically. It’s part of a showcase called the Dream Box, which features items Parton deemed important enough for preservation. Parton spoke about her intention with these in a 2015 statement just before the resort opened.

Parton said in her statement, “My new resort is a dream 30 years in the making, and the items I picked for my Dream Box are closely tied to special people who encouraged me and certain events in my life where that encouragement paid off. My dream is that families who stay with us will be reminded that encouraging and loving each other is a powerful way to connect with one another.”

The box itself was created by hand by Parton’s Uncle Bill, and among its contents are a piece of wood from her family home, a copy of her 2009 commencement speech which gave the DreamMore resort its name – and one other item which fans won’t be able to appreciate properly for a long time to come.

Hidden in the box is an extra-important Dolly Parton treasure. There’s a song she wrote and performed, burned onto a CD, in there. It’s called “My Place in History.” But no-one, not even the most devoted Dolly fan, will be able to hear it until the box is opened in 2046.

Hiding a song away in a time capsule wasn’t actually Parton’s idea. She recounted in her 2020 book Songteller: My Life in Lyrics that it had actually been a member of her Dollywood team who had brought the idea up. They thought it would be good for the marketing of DreamMore, and Parton had agreed.

Parton mused in her book about the hidden CD. She said, “It would be a song that will never be heard until 30 years from the time we opened the resort. They said, ‘You’ll be long dead.’ I said, ‘Well, maybe not. I’ll be 99. I’ve seen people live to be older than that.’” It seems since then plans may have changed slightly, as the sign in front of the memory box at Dollywood clearly states the casket will now be opened on Parton’s 100th birthday in January 2046.

Indeed, it’s a bit much to assume that Parton will be dead by 2046. She’s in her 70s now and still doing just fine. She told Marie Claire magazine in 2020, “I just really stay alive because I just live on creative and spiritual energy. I’m like the little Energizer Bunny. I’m just recharged by the excitement of being able to still be active and to still be able to create stuff and to be still in demand.”

But Parton remains a little sad to be hiding one of her songs away where no-one, not even she herself, can hear it. She said in her book, “So, I wrote this song, and I can’t say what it is. It’s just burning me up inside that I have to leave it in there.” 

She also mentioned in the book that the Dream Box also contained a CD player which would actually play the song, because in Parton’s own words “there’s no telling what music is going to be by then.” She added that when the time came to retrieve the song “hopefully, it will play and the whole thing ain’t rotted.”

Parton concluded, “Anyway, it’s kind of weird or strange that they would ask me to write this mystery song. I don’t know if I want to live to be 100 or not. But you never know. I might, and if I do, I’m going to be at that opening.” Here’s to hoping that she is.

And what about the future of Dollywood itself? It probably goes without saying that Parton wants the park to outlive her, so what are the plans in that department? Well, we do know that Parton, true to form, has absolutely no plans whatsoever to retire. She’s the heart and soul of the theme park, after all.

Parton told the Knoxville News Sentinel newspaper in June 2021, “I work all the time, so they say, ‘Are you never going to retire?’ I said, ‘I can’t. I’ve dreamed myself into a corner.’ Now I have to be responsible for all these dreams that are coming true.” Probably no-one expected anything less.

The beloved singer said in the same interview, “I have to keep working at it, and I’m excited about it. It keeps me alive; keeps me feeling young, whether I am or not. I don’t pay attention to the numbers. I just say, ‘What... can I do while I’m still around to make my life and other people’s… [lives] more enjoyable?’”

Parton’s already done that, and how. As with the rest of the park, the DreamMore resort was popular from the moment it opened. Website Yahoo!Travel said of the place when it opened, “The personal touches were also nice to see, from instruments that belonged to Dolly to an impressive wall of her discography. It seems like such a small thing, but I also loved that my bathroom had a makeup remover pad.  It just seemed like something Dolly would have in her bathroom.”

Such was the success of DreamMore that now Parton has a whole new resort planned. She announced in 2021 that the next one would be called Dollywood's HeartSong Lodge and Resort, and it would open in 2023. She was naturally very excited about it, as evidenced in her statement regarding the new build.

Parton said, “I’m so proud of this place that we've been able to build here in the Smokies. I always dreamed of accomplishing two things with Dollywood. I wanted to give jobs to the folks who live here and I wanted to give visitors another reason to come and experience the beauty of the Smoky Mountains. We celebrated our 35th season last year, so I think it is fair to say we've been able to do that.”

She went on, “I’m so happy with what we are doing to make sure our guests have a great season this year, and being able to announce the new HeartSong Lodge & Resort is just one more way we're going to be able to help families reconnect, explore and discover together. I truly believe the natural beauty of the Smokies and the warmth of this special place will inspire every guest to nurture the ‘heartsong’ within them.”

And there are more plans for after that, too. Parton told Travel and Leisure magazine in 2021, “We have come a long way, baby! This was always my dream, of course, and I remember when we first opened, I was worried that nobody was going to show up, and now we’re worried too many [are] going to show up... That’s why we have to always keep expanding.”

Parton went on, “I just always wanted to have something special to leave behind, and jobs for my people – there are so many of them –  the ones who like to pick and sing, there’s a place for them, and the others who like to work, there’s a place for them… It was about bringing jobs to people in this area.”

The phrase “something special to leave behind” sums up so much of Parton’s approach to Dollywood, and indeed to the Dreambox. There have been no more announcements of any more time capsules, but Parton does have some ideas about incorporating her own presidential-style library into the park.

Dollywood is undoubtedly a great legacy to leave. Parton told the San Diego Union Tribune newspaper in 2010, “I would honestly say that with all the awards and all the other things that I’ve done in my life, Dollywood is one of the greatest dreams that I’ve ever had come true. I am so proud of that I can’t even begin to tell you.” 

We might know one little thing about Parton’s hidden song: it’s probably the only thing we’ll know about it for decades. According to the newspaper The Tampa Bay Times in 2015 one of the lines of its lyrics runs, “I hope I’ve earned it, and hope you still remember me.” But there’s surely no doubt that they will.