The Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, five miles north of Gatlinburg, holds one of its five annual festivals, Barbeque and Bluegrass, over Labor Day weekend. The full festival runs August 19 to September 5, 2011. The festival showcases bluegrass music and barbeque. Past bluegrass performers have included Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Riders in the Sky, Rhonda Vincent and The Gibson Brothers. Dollywood is a 150-acre amusement park featuring themes based on the life and career of country music star Dolly Parton.
The annual Gatlinburg Gathering is a large-scale southern gospel music festival that takes place in the Gatlinburg Convention Center. The three-day festival features several nightly concerts with more than two dozen popular southern gospel recording artists. Previous years' gatherings have featured Gold City, The Hoppers, Ivan Parker, The Triumphant Quartet and Kirk Talley. More than 3,500 gospel music lovers descend on Gatlinburg for the concerts and special speakers during Labor Day weekend.
Labor Day weekend is the official kick-off of the city's fall foliage season. Fall colors rippling up Gatlinburg's mountainsides are the major tourist draw to the area. Visitors fill vacation cabins and spur dozens of sales, small-town craft events and festivals. The county-wide Smoky Mountain Harvest Festival spans Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Seviersville in mid-September. Labor Day introduces a new crisp to the air that escalates to full-blown color by September 15. The season usually lasts seven weeks, according to the city of Gatlinburg's Department of Tourism. Visitors and long-time residents watch the various elevations light up with color throughout the weeks. Elevations above 4,000 feet change first, turning the yellow birch, American beech, mountain maple, hobblebush and pin cherry into natural wonders.
