Dolly Parton’s Impressive Down-Home-Meets-Hollywood Collection of Houses

NEED TO KNOW

• Dolly Parton’s collection of homes included properties in Tennessee, California, and a replica of her childhood cabin built at Dollywood
• Her longtime Nashville estate, Willow Lake Plantation, was built with family help and expanded over many decades
• Parton’s former California homes feature unique touches like a guitar-shaped toilet seat and an outdoor windmill

People magazine ran a wonderful article about Dolly’s many homes. Read the story below.

From humble beginnings in a one-bedroom log cabin at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains, to a sprawling Nashville estate and multiple West Coast retreats, Dolly Parton had a real estate portfolio that matched her larger-than-life persona. 

The country music icon, who died on Tuesday, Aug. 25, at age 80, purchased multiple properties across the country that balanced family, relaxation, privacy and creative inspiration.

The Locust Ridge Cabin

Parton often reflected on her modest upbringing in Tennessee, which included the one-bedroom log cabin she shared with 11 siblings. The property is located in Locust Ridge, just outside of Sevierville, Tenn. The actual log cabin where Parton grew up is not open to the public, according to The Smokies and HearthSide Cabin Rentals. However, fans can still experience her childhood home by visiting an exact replica of it at Dollywood, the singer’s 165-acre theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn.

The Antioch Starter Home

In a January 2026 interview with Rolling Stone, the Steel Magnolias actress opened up about leaving her hometown in 1964 to live in Nashville after graduating high school. That same year, she met her future husband, Carl Thomas Dean, outside a Nashville laundromat. 

Two years later, they wed and went on to purchase a two-story red-brick house in Antioch, Tenn., according to her 1994 memoir Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. While the home “was nice enough,” she shared, it wasn’t their “dream house.” 

Willow Lake Plantation

In the book, Parton revealed around the same time, they purchased 75 acres of land in Brentwood, a suburb of Nashville, long before the country star “achieved anything that could be considered stardom.” 

With the help of Parton’s Uncle Dot Watson — the primary builder — her brothers Denver and Randy, and Dean’s own “blood and sweat,” the 23-room house was completed in 1972.

In 1999, the couple reportedly purchased an adjacent property for $400,000 to expand the estate, according to Architectural Digest. “A lot of people call it ‘Tara,’ but Carl and I never have,” she wrote, referring to the famed Georgia estate from Gone with the Wind. “To us it will always be Willow Lake Plantation.”

Parton and Dean shared a quiet domestic life at the property until Dean’s death in March 2025 at age 82.

A Hollywood Hideaway

Along the way, Parton also purchased a number of properties on the West Coast, including a two-bedroom, two-bathroom home in West Hollywood, Calif. The property is currently available for rent for $12,000 a month, with the listing held by Richard Schulman of KW Westside Estates.

According to CBS LA, the “9 to 5” singer purchased the 1923 home in 2007 and owned it until 2023. 

The House with Its Own Windmill

Cris Lapp tells the outlet he is currently attempting to sell another one of Parton’s former properties in Solvang, Calif. The cozy cottage-style estate is a three-unit property with a windmill out front and a plaque that reads “Former home of Dolly Parton. Singer, actress & American icon.”

Lapp bought the property in 2022 for $1.37 million. It is currently listed for $2 million. Her built-in desk is still there, he says. “It has Dolly Parton’s fingernail polish on it, in silver, in pink and in red with glitter in it,” he says. 

The House with a Guitar Toilet

Another one of Parton’s California properties was full of mountain charm, just like her home in Nashville. In Idyllwild, Calif., a rustic three-story mountain retreat came complete with a guitar-shaped toilet seat and keys for a wig truck. “Everything is exactly like the day she walked out after COVID,” current owner Brian Vassalo tells CBS LA. “She even left her Rolodex in the home with phone numbers of her friends.” 

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The property was owned by Parton and Dean for decades before they gifted it to the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Southern California.