Dolly Partons Dollywood theme park transformed her rural Tennessee home into a billion-dollar tourism mecca: Never forgot where she was from

She sang “9-to-5” — but worked 24-7 to help her hometown.Dolly Parton never forgot her roots in the backwoods of Tennessee — and used the money she got as a global singing star to open a theme park in her hometown that became the community’s economic lifeline.As the beloved “Dreamer in Chief” at Dollywood, the country legend — who passed away at 80 Tuesday — drew millions to the formerly depressed rural area to enjoy a one-of-kind and down-home experience she personally curated.“Dollywood was really the catalyst that has allowed our area to take off,” Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters told The Post Thursday.“Her promotion of the area all over the world — you can’t buy publicity like that.“Everywhere she went, she talked about her home and how beautiful it was here, and how great the people were,” he added.

“That means so much to us.”Life wasn’t easy for the Partons growing up — the family cabin had no running water or electricity, and Dolly’s illiterate father got by as a farmer and laborer.That was an existence typical of the Tennessee community, and made up the formative experience that Parton expressed in song to world-wide acclaim.Instead of turning her success into a glam life in Hollywood, Parton instead created Dollywood by buying  an old theme park called Silver Dollar City in 1986 and hiring locals to help her welcome the world to her birthplace.The park now sprawls across 168 acres in the town of Pigeon Forge, and is filled with roller coasters, water rides, an entire steam train and buildings evoking traditional Appalachia and its bygone ways of life.Central to the park is a board by board recreation of the very cabin Dolly lived in after she was born in 1946 — and even her own kin have a hard time believing the huge family got by in such a small space.“I can’t imagine how they had so many people in that little house,” Dolly’s niece, Jennifer, said Thursday.“They really had to get along.”“I was...