Gatlinburg, a mountain town in eastern Tennessee, is known as a gateway to the roughly 520,000-acre Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Many of its key attractions offer sweeping views of the neighboring park, including the 407-ft. Space Needle observation tower and the Sky Lift, a 2.1-mile aerial cable car that journeys from Downtown to the popular amusement park and ski resort Ober Gatlinburg.

Pigeon Forge, a mountain town and vacation area in eastern Tennessee, is the home of Dollywood, country singer Dolly Parton’s Appalachian-themed park consisting of rides, an adjoining water park and a museum of her costumes and memorabilia. The city’s other attractions include country music revues like the Smoky Mountain Opry, dinner theaters such as Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede and outlet malls.

Sevierville is a city in east Tennessee. To the south, Great Smoky Mountains National Park has forest trails and waterfalls. A statue of country singer Dolly Parton, a Sevierville native, is downtown by the 1896 beaux arts–style courthouse. The Tennessee Museum of Aviation has vintage aircraft, including 2 rare P-47 Thunderbolts. To the east, the Forbidden Caverns are vast underground caves with calcite formations.

Townsend is a city in Blount County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The population was 244 at the 2000 census and 448 at the 2010 census.

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For thousands of years a site of Native American occupation by varying cultures, Townsend is one of three "gateways" to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.