Discover Pigeon Forge, gateway for more than half of the nearly 11 million annual visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Learn about the history of the people that have inhabited this region since the town’s founding in 1820, and delve into mountain music, storytelling and other signature elements of Smoky Mountains culture. Meet a local historian to trace the evolution of Pigeon Forge’s burgeoning theater, music, magic and comedy scenes, brought forth by the town’s access to a half-million-acre International Biosphere Reserve, and visit the town of Oak Ridge to study its history as a base for the Manhattan Project, as well as the role still played by scientific development in the economy and culture of “the Atomic City.”

Walking less than one mile, some uneven, unpaved. Elevations up to 5,050 feet.

Pigeon Forge

More than 10 million people each year visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and more than half of them pass through the nearby mountain-resort gateway of Pigeon Forge. Born of this high visitor volume is a flowering performing-arts scene featuring theater, music, magic and comedy, as well as a robust calendar of car and truck-shows.