PIGEON FORGE, Tenn. – Singing “Hurray for Dollywood,” Dolly Parton marked the 20th anniversary of her Smoky Mountain theme park recently with goals of doubling attendance and investing $160 million into it over the next two decades.

“We are just getting started,” she told the opening-day crowd. “We are going to keep dreaming and continuing to grow ... and prove that we are one of the best theme parks in the whole wide world.”

Parton said that the future may also include a Dollywood resort hotel in Pigeon Forge, plus other additions and maybe even a Dollywood II or Dollywood III.

“But it will have to make good sense,” said Parton, who backed away from a proposed Dollywood II in Japan.

As part of the 20th anniversary celebration, a 1982 interview was played in which Parton told Barbara Walters she had a dream for a theme park in the Tennessee hills that would be “sort of a fantasy city ... a Smoky Mountain fairyland.”

Perhaps only Parton could foresee how it would turn out.

The 125-acre Dollywood features more than 30 mountain-themed rides and attractions, musical shows and native craftsmen. It drew more than 2.2 million visitors in 2004, making it the top paid tourist attraction in Tennessee – nearly four times as many visitors as Graceland in Memphis.

Dollywood ranked 28th out of more than 400 U.S. amusement parks in attendance last year, according to trade publication Amusement Business.

Parton partnered in 1985 with Branson, Mo. - based Herschend Enterprises to convert its Silver Dollar City into Dollywood. Attendance doubled in a year, and the local economy boomed as malls, music theaters and restaurants sprang up.

The mountain resort town of 5,456 residents recorded $714 million in gross business receipts last year. In July alone, Pigeon Forge brought in nearly as much money as in all of 1984, before Dollywood arrived.

“There was a wonderful number of people coming in,” said Susan Whitaker, Tennessee commissioner for tourism development. “But when Dolly put her name to that theme park, that changed everything.”

Parton says she didn’t get into Dollywood for personal wealth but to help her native Sevier County in the Appalachians. Dollywood employs more than 2,000 people, including at times most of Parton’s 289 kinfolk.

“I was just feeling Dollywood would do a lot of good for the folks back here because I have watched my family and other families around here struggle to make ends meet,” she said. “I wanted to create a place where families can have fun and also to give folks good work and have enough money to raise a good family of their own.”

So what will Dollywood look like in 20 years?

“Well, you never know,” the 59-year-old Parton said. “You try to set up these things in your lifetime that will still go and be just as good or better after you are gone,” she said. “So if you do your job right ... it will carry on.”

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