Dolly Parton has sold over a hundred million records and built a theme-park empire, but ask her what she is proudest of and she won’t name a song. She’ll name the books. Since 1995, her Imagination Library has mailed more than 200 million free books to children around the world — and every one of them traces back to a man from Locust Ridge who couldn’t read a word.

A promise to her father

Robert Lee Parton worked hard his whole life — farming, construction, whatever the mountains offered — but he never learned to read or write. It embarrassed him, and it broke his daughter’s heart. Dolly has said her father was the smartest man she ever knew, and that his inability to read was simply the circumstance of a poor mountain boy who had to work instead of going to school.

So in 1995, she started something in his honor: every child in Sevier County, Tennessee — her home county — would receive a free book in the mail every month, from birth until their fifth birthday. No means testing, no applications to argue over. Just books, showing up like clockwork, so every child could build a little library of their own. She called it the Imagination Library, and she dedicated it to her father.

From one county to the world

What happened next is the kind of story that only happens when the idea is exactly right. Communities across Tennessee asked to join. Then other states. Then other countries — Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland. Local partners cover the postage and help enroll families; the foundation handles the books, chosen by early-childhood experts, with the first book always the same beloved classic: The Little Engine That Could.

In 2023 the program passed 200 million books gifted. Think about that number for a second. Two hundred million bedtime stories. Two hundred million moments of a parent and a child, heads bent together over a page. For a girl who grew up in a one-room cabin, it may be the most staggering thing she has ever built — bigger than any stage, because it happens in living rooms, quietly, millions of times over.

Why it matters on a family vacation

Here’s the thing about the Imagination Library: it understands what family travel understands. The best part of a trip with kids isn’t the attraction — it’s the togetherness. The unhurried morning. The story before bed. The moment everybody is in the same room, nobody is rushing, and the day belongs to you.

That’s exactly what a Smoky Mountain cabin gives a family. No hotel hallways, no splitting up across rooms, no schedule except the one you make. Mornings together in a full kitchen. Evenings where the kids can be kids — splashing, playing, winding down — while the grown-ups actually get to exhale.

Bring the kids. Leave with a story.

Pigeon Forge is one of the great family destinations in America, and Dolly made sure of that twice over — once with the park, once with the books. Our cabins are built for the kind of trip where the family stays together under one roof: