Dolly Parton’s lifelong love letter to the Smoky Mountains

Dolly Parton spent her life telling the world where she came from.

Appalachia was woven through her songs, her stories, her businesses, and the unmistakable identity she carried from rural East Tennessee to stages around the world. Her 1973 album and song My Tennessee Mountain Home turned that connection to place into music, but the mountains were never simply a backdrop to her career.

Throughout her life, Parton repeatedly invested in the wildlife, people, and communities of the landscape that raised her.

Following her death on August 25, 2026, at age 80, much has rightly been written about her extraordinary musical career and philanthropy. Yet another part of her legacy can be found closer to home, in the mountains, wildlife, and communities of East Tennessee that she spent a lifetime celebrating and supporting.

The mountains that shaped Dolly Parton

Parton's connection to nature began long before she became one of the most recognizable entertainers in the world.

The landscape that shaped Parton is also one of the most biologically rich places in North America. Great Smoky Mountains National Park protects more than 100 species of native trees, 1,400 varieties of flowering plants, and an extraordinary diversity of wildlife. Its ancient mountains and varied elevations create habitats ranging from lush hardwood forests to high-elevation spruce-fir ecosystems, making the Smokies a refuge for an exceptional concentration of life.

In a 2022 interview with National Geographic, Parton described the Smokies as having "a heart of their own." Reflecting on the region’s enduring musical traditions, she said being there made her feel as though she were "on sacred ground."

That reverence also shaped the way she spoke about environmental responsibility.

“My hope for the environment, for all things living, and all things good, just nature in general, is that we should pay more attention to how we're treating our mountains, how we're treating our world, how we're just treating everything.” — Dolly Parton

Parton was not an environmental activist in the conventional sense. She did not build her public identity around climate campaigns or conservation policy. Instead, much of her environmental legacy grew out of something more personal: loving one place deeply enough to keep giving back to it.

Thirty-five years of bald eagle conservation

One of the clearest examples began in 1991, when Dollywood partnered with the nonprofit American Eagle Foundation to establish Eagle Mountain Sanctuary for bald eagles that could no longer survive in the wild. Parton personally helped open the sanctuary that April, joining AEF founder Al Cecere and Bob Hope in releasing a bald eagle during the dedication.

Over the next 35 years, the partnership supported raptor rehabilitation, bald eagle breeding and release programs, and conservation education at Dollywood. The American Eagle Foundation released more than 400 bald eagles into the wild, while millions of visitors learned about eagles and other birds of prey through Eagle Mountain Sanctuary and the Wings of America program.

Parton's support received national recognition. In 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service presented her with its Partnership Award for her support of bald eagle conservation and the National Wildlife Refuge System. At the time, the American Eagle Foundation described Parton as its largest benefactor and reported that Dollywood had contributed millions of dollars toward public education and eagle care and recovery efforts.

Just days before Parton's death, Dollywood and the American Eagle Foundation announced a new chapter in their partnership. Following storm damage to Eagle Mountain Sanctuary, its non-releasable eagles were moved permanently to AEF's 50-acre conservation campus in nearby Kodak, Tennessee, while raptor conservation education would continue at Dollywood.

Standing with the Smokies when disaster struck

Parton's idea of caring for home was never limited to wildlife.

When catastrophic wildfires swept through Gatlinburg and Sevier County in November 2016, Parton responded almost immediately. Through the Dollywood Foundation, she established the My People Fund to provide direct cash assistance to families who had lost their primary residences.

The program initially provided $1,000 per month for six months to affected families. As donations grew, the final payment increased to $5,000, bringing the total support to $10,000 for each participating family. More than 900 families ultimately received assistance.

The Smoky Mountains Rise telethon and broader fundraising effort ultimately raised more than $12 million, with $8.9 million distributed directly to wildfire victims and an additional $3 million committed to longer-term recovery through the Mountain Tough Recovery Team.

Her response was strikingly local. When announcing the effort, Parton explained, “I’ve always believed charity begins at home and my home is some place special.”

Returning again after Hurricane Helene

Eight years later, Appalachia was again confronting widespread destruction.

After Hurricane Helene brought catastrophic flooding across parts of the southeastern United States in 2024, Parton personally donated $1 million to the Mountain Ways Foundation to support relief efforts. Her East Tennessee businesses, including Dollywood Parks & Resorts, the Dollywood Foundation, Dolly Parton's Stampede, and Pirates Voyage Dinner & Show, collectively contributed another $1 million.

Once again, her response came back to place.

Speaking in Newport, Tennessee, Parton described the affected mountains, valleys, rivers, and communities as part of her home. The area damaged by the storm was the same place that had shaped her childhood, her music, and much of what she later built. 

Planting wonder through the Imagination Library

Parton’s care for the world around her also reached children through one of her most ambitious legacies, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

She launched the program in 1995 in Sevier County, Tennessee, inspired by her father’s inability to read and write. What began by sending free books to children in the community where she grew up eventually expanded across five countries. By late 2025, the Imagination Library had gifted more than 300 million books to children from birth to age five.

The program was created to foster literacy, not specifically environmental education. Yet many of the books chosen for its young readers encourage curiosity about the living world.

Among them is What’s New, Daniel? by Micha Archer, a story about discovering the small wonders found within an urban park. Rose Weaves a Garden by Rashin Kheiriyeh celebrates knowledge passed from a grandfather to his granddaughter through the traditional art of weaving and the flowers reflected in their work. Full Moon Pups by Liz Garton Scanlon introduces children to the lives of wolves and the ways members of a pack grow, play, and care for one another.

Together with other titles about animals, forests, oceans, and the changing seasons, these stories can offer children an early invitation to notice a bird in the backyard, learn where materials come from, or pay closer attention to what's growing just beyond the front door.

A legacy rooted in love of place

Dolly Parton's environmental legacy is unusual because it cannot be separated neatly from the rest of her life.

Dollywood was a business, but it was also an investment in the region she came from. Since opening in 1986, it grew into Sevier County's largest employer and an economic anchor for communities surrounding the Great Smoky Mountains.

Eagle Mountain Sanctuary was a visitor attraction, but it also supported decades of eagle conservation, rehabilitation, recovery, and environmental education.

Her disaster relief was humanitarian, but it repeatedly centered on helping Appalachian communities rebuild after devastating fires and floods.

And through it all, the Smoky Mountains remained present in her music and public identity. She understood the mountains not as scenery, but as home, a place composed of forests, culture, memory, and people.

Perhaps that is why her environmental message was so simple: Take care of where we call home, pay attention to how we treat the natural world, and give something back to the places that give so much to us.

"... mistreating Mother Nature, that's like being ugly to your mama." 

Rest in peace, Dolly Parton.