National Review
Southern Comfort: Finding the Flip Side of Tacky in Tennessee
By Charles C. W. Cooke
August 21, 2025 3:27 PM
Pigeon Forge is one of the strangest and most enjoyable tourist destinations in America
Pigeon Forge, Tenn. — The Old Time Photo Booth is next to the tattoo parlor, which is next to the helicopter tour, which is next to the Best Western Plus. A little farther along, opposite the upside-down mansion, a gorilla is climbing an Empire State Building that lacks a spire. And, if you look just past the Hatfield & McCoy barn, you’ll see a scale model of the RMS Titanic, complete with themed White Star Line loading dock and a turn-of-the-century ice cream parlor. Along the main strip, roller-coaster-esque go-kart tracks predominate — one of these towers is above my motel, almost touching the room. Mini-golf attractions abound, each with a name more flamboyant than the last. One of them is decorated permanently for Christmas. Another has goats on the roof. And in the background, looming over it all, stand the brooding Smoky Mountains.
This is Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, one of the strangest, and, surprisingly, most enjoyable tourist destinations in the United States — and I have come here, with my family in tow, out of sheer old-fashioned curiosity.
I had been told by a friend before I left home that Pigeon Forge is the “tackiest place on earth,” and there is some truth to that description. Certainly, it is unusual. Despite being a landlocked mountain town, at the edge of a landlocked state, Pigeon Forge is home to the world’s largest Titanic museum (the other, inexplicably, is in equally dry Branson, Mo.) and to a crime exhibition themed after Alcatraz (“Alcatraz East,” it calls itself, for some reason). In nearby Gatlinburg is found the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum, one of the two most comprehensive collections of such household items in the world (it owns 20,000 in total, and it’s busy expanding its collection of mills). In addition, Pigeon Forge has a series of six baseball fields, each one a replica of a famous major- or minor-league park; a winery (est. 1991); and, at the top of the hill, Dollywood, a world-class amusement park named after, and co-owned by, Dolly Parton. Absent the wanton consumption of a truckload of hallucinogenic drugs, there is not a city planner in the world who would have come up with that assortment. It could only have evolved — and, for that matter, it could only have evolved in the United States.
Unfortunately, we arrived at our motel too late to see the Elvis impersonator, or to take advantage of the free jalapeño margaritas. Happily, though, the Titanic museum was still open, and so, with a little trepidation, we headed there instead. And do you know what? It was absolutely fantastic. Truly. From start to finish, it was thoughtful, comprehensive, informative, and experiential in a way that never felt exploitative. Granted, if one had visited only the adjacent ice cream shop–where one can buy an ice cream sundae constructed to look like the Titanic, while Captain Smith looks down on you from the ceiling and the speakers play selections from The Godfather soundtrack (why?)–one might have concluded that the place was in terrible taste. (A friend of mine, an expert on the Titanic, suggested dryly to me via text message that the parlor’s proprietors should have gone all in on the crassness and inscribed “Ice cream, right ahead!” on the door.) But one would have been wrong. I was impressed. My wife was impressed. My children were agog.
Upon “embarkation,” each of us was given a “boarding pass,” which, cleverly, doubled as a biography of a real passenger. The idea behind this was to encourage each visitor to pay particular attention to the parts of the ship that they — as a first-, second-, or third-class customer — would have stayed in, as well as to render the Memorial Room at the end of the tour more personal than it otherwise might be. Equally fascinating were a walk-in exhibit that re-created the deck of the ship at the various angles it took during the sinking, full reconstructions of the grand staircase and a first-class suite, and, most poignant of all, a chilled “outdoor” area that featured water that had been cooled to 28 degrees. Each guest was encouraged to put his hand into the water and count how long it took before it became unbearable. None of us lasted more than seven seconds.
After the museum, it was off to Alcatraz East — which was also pretty well done. Where else, after all, would one expect to see a floorboard stained with Jesse James’s blood, a selection of firearms used by John Dillinger, a display of witch-torturing devices from early colonial America, and the Ford Bronco — yes, the actual Ford Bronco — that was driven by O. J. Simpson during his famous chase? I am never quite sure what it is in the human psyche that likes this sort of thing, but whatever the answer may be, I always have. As a child, I was fascinated by the tales told by the tour guides at the Tower of London as well as by those at the medieval torture museum that was near the village we often stayed in on vacation in France. I had wondered, going in, if my own kids would be bored by it all, but in fact my challenge was to carefully steer them away from the things that I didn’t want them to see or know about (serial killers, terrorism) and toward the ones that I did (cowboys, gangsters in the 1920s, the police training area where you could sit on a motorcycle, etc.). As a rule, I am happy to field any questions that my children might throw at me, but even I was keen to avoid “Daddy, who is Jeffrey Dahmer?” — and so, when we had run out of PG content, I suggested that, if we all decamped to the Hard Rock Café pronto, I’d let them order whatever they wanted from the dessert menu.
On the way, my younger child asked, without prejudice, “What exactly is this place?” In all honesty, I wasn’t quite sure how to answer it. Superficially, Pigeon Forge has something in common with Las Vegas. But it is not Las Vegas. Nor is it Nashville or Orlando or Coney Island or anywhere else that might immediately spring to mind. It’s far too big to be an overweight roadside attraction but far too small to be an ersatz Disney World. It is, in essence, a modernized Victorian curios exhibition — with all the seediness and entertainment and hustle that that implies. There is a quality of the sandbox about Pigeon Forge. It is permanent but also distinctly temporary — like an old Wild West town that had an address and a sheriff but was made entirely of flammable wood. If, in the course of three too many cocktails, a friend were to confide a heartfelt, if irresolute, desire to build America’s largest plastic hippopotamus, I would instantly know what advice to offer: “Go West, young man, to Pigeon Forge, and buy up the empty lot by the old Opry Theater.”
And then there is Dollywood, which, I am pleased to report, is one of the nicest, friendliest, cleanest, most fit-for-purpose amusement parks I have ever visited. The setting helps — as with Hersheypark and Cedar Point, the developers have got one heck of a piece of land to work with — but, as many an entrepreneur has discovered, there is a great deal more involved in running a successful venture than the acquisition of interesting terrain. All things considered, one would not necessarily assume that a roller-coaster park named after Dolly Parton would be as pleasant and genteel as it is; famously, Parton explained that “it costs a lot of money to look this cheap.” Dollywood does not look cheap. It looks charming. The food is good. The staff are amiable. The rides are fantastic. And, even on a Sunday, the lines were so manageable that we got everything done within five hours of entering the gates.
We live currently in the age of intellectual property. Today, most movies are sequels or reboots or parts of broader franchises, and, to a lesser extent, the same is true of theme parks. The Disney parks are all the same. The Six Flags properties share names, characters, and even ride designs. Universal Studios in Florida looks much the same as Universal Studios in California or Japan. But Dollywood? Dollywood is unique. Moreover, it has to be unique. Aware, perhaps, that its location in the Smokies is striking enough, every “land” in Dollywood conforms to its surroundings. There’s Craftman’s Valley and Rivertown Junction and Timber Canyon and Wilderness Pass and — you get the picture. Parton’s aim was to build something where she was from, and she’s achieved exactly that. There are no space-themed areas or jungle-themed zones or princess castles at Dollywood, because none of those things existed in 1960s Sevierville. Red’s Café did, though, so it’s there — right next to the Lightning Rod roller coaster that’s themed around a mid-20th-century garage. This approach is observed to the letter. The roller coasters are themed to bears, eagles, dragonflies, tornadoes, and mines. One of the rides, Wild Eagle, even has a verse from Isaiah inscribed at the entrance: “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Again: Where else but America?
I will readily admit that I have never quite understood why the name P. T. Barnum is so often uttered with a mild sneer these days. As a politician, Barnum did yeoman’s work opposing slavery; as a philanthropist, he funded education, museums, and hospitals; and, as a businessman, he brought joy to millions of people, without caring whether the arbiters of taste approved. Despite the legend, he never actually said “there’s a sucker born every minute,” and he almost certainly never thought it, either, because, unlike most of his rivals, he understood that if his offerings and novelties made people happy, his work was both virtuous and complete.
It is nice that the United States has the Guggenheim and the Frick and the Getty. But all nations have such places. What is different here is that one can drive into the middle of nowhere and be accorded a choice between the Sky Pirates of Mermaid Bay crazy golf course or the Professor Hacker’s Lost Treasure crazy golf course, or, if you feel like swinging over to the next town, Hillbilly Mini Golf, which has been carefully built into the steep side of a mountain and is accessible only by the funicular railway that begins a few hundred feet from Dahl’s Chainsaw Art. I, too, am awed and moved by the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, by Mozart’s Requiem, and by 1982 Château Latour. They are the best of what man has made and thought and loved. But I also think it matters enormously that people aspire to the sort of unbridled elation they feel when falling half-drunk off a tire swing into a precarious creek. That need in the soul is profound, too, and, for better or worse, Pigeon Forge exists to satiate it.
