Pigeon Forge Map Art

Pigeon Forge is a city in Sevier County, Tennessee, 5 miles north of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with 6,343 people at the 2020 census. It is a destination for fans of Southern culture and country music, home to Dollywood, Dollywood's Splash Country, music theaters, museums and shops. The name comes from an iron forge that Isaac Love built around 1820 on the Little Pigeon River, near what became the Old Mill, and the river was named for the flocks of passenger pigeons that once gathered on its banks. For centuries the Cherokee hunted in this valley, and a footpath called the Indian Gap Trail crossed the Smokies and passed through it. US 441 follows much the same line today. The Old Mill, a working gristmill on the National Register since 1975, still stands on the West Fork of the Little Pigeon, off the Parkway at Light 7.