Becky Bullard was en route home to Austin, Texas, when she heard the news.

“As soon as I heard about Dolly, I thought of you,” read a text from a close friend while she waited for her flight home from Albany, New York.

“And I was like: ‘Heard what?’” Bullard recalled in an interview, her eyes widening.

She had a connecting flight through Charlotte, North Carolina, and decided to rent a car and drive nearly four hours to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to pay homage to Dolly Parton, the larger-than-life country music superstar who died on 25 August at 80, shortly after being diagnosed with cancer.

Bullard knew she needed to go all out. She already had white cowboy boots, but she was missing that signature Parton sparkle. She found a gold-sequined dress at an antique shop, and added red lipstick and gold earrings that said “DOLLY” in script.

“Everything I wear usually is like sequins and fringe and rhinestones and all the things,” Bullard said. “And I don’t think that I would have given myself permission to express in that way [without Dolly].”

Bullard, who said Parton’s unapologetic nature helped her demand to be taken seriously as a woman in the world, was among thousands who flocked to the songwriter’s 160-acre (65-hectare) theme park on Wednesday to pay tribute to the icon.

Dollywood, which opened in 1986 just miles from Parton’s home town, draws more than 4 million visitors annually.

Parton, who grew up in poverty in east Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains, told Barbara Walters in a 1982 interview that she intended to open a theme park, “a fantasy city, sort of like Disneyland, but like a mountain Disneyland”.

She was successful in that vision. In addition to rollercoasters and other rides, the park is filled with vendors dedicated to Appalachian craftsmanship, including leather workers, herbalists and bakers. A small chapel is set aside for anyone who wants a quiet moment to reflect. There are museums dedicated to Parton’s musical career and her philanthropy, and butterfly iconography at every turn. The park is a manifestation of the Dolly Parton ethos that bigger is always best, but at its heart, it’s a love letter to the region that raised her.

“I always thought that if I made it big or got successful at what I had started out to do, that I wanted to come back to my part of the country and do something great, something that would bring a lot of jobs into this area,” Parton said in an interview with the Associated Press marking the 25th anniversary of the park in 2010.

On Wednesday, a memorial at the park’s entrance held bouquets of flowers, letters, drawings and other tributes to Parton. A pair of Velour-brand false eyelashes in their packaging were tucked behind a jar of sunflowers; in Sharpie, a mourner had written: “Cried these off! From Texas.” A letter from a family, presumably written before news of her death broke, described the mother’s decision to name her newborn Parton for the woman who “exude[s] warmth, integrity and grit”. A photo of the baby was included.

Dollywood is the largest employer in Sevier county, with about 4,000 people on the payroll, according to the park’s president, Eugene Naughton. “Everyone’s worried about, oh, what’s going to happen now that Dolly’s gone, and I can assure that we’re carrying her light forward,” Naughton said. “She taught us how to dream big, so we have very ambitious plans on a moving-forward basis that I know she’ll be proud of.”

Savannah Duncan, a 19-year-old Dolly Parton fan, said the park atmosphere on Wednesday was solemn. “I walked in, and you could just feel it,” she said. “Everyone’s been hit hard here.”

Duncan, who is pursuing a degree in psychology, said Parton inspires her as a girl who’s grown up in Appalachia. “The over-the-top, the wig, the rhinestones – it inspires you to be yourself,” she said. “And she’s very proud of Appalachia – we’re underappreciated, a very poor region, and she’s never strayed from her pride.”

Duncan admired Parton’s rebellion against the gendered expectations of the conservative south.

“You know, in this area, they try to tone you down, tell you what you can be and what you can’t be,” she said. “Especially living in Appalachia, people underestimate you and your intelligence, but she proved we can do anything.”

Ashley and Cynthia Pandolfo were visiting the region from Philadelphia, taking a “mountain vacation” at their six-year-old son’s behest, and they weren’t initially sure they would venture into the theme park. But when they heard about Parton’s death yesterday, they felt compelled to visit.

As they made their way through the park, their son asked why they kept seeing people who were crying. “We told him it was just, you don’t meet, you don’t see a lot of truly nice people,” Ashley Pandolfo said. “It’s sad to lose a really nice person.”

The women appreciated Parton’s unrelenting support of the queer community and her dedication to a spirit of acceptance.

As a gay couple, they were a little nervous to travel to the south. “We were like: ‘This is one place that I feel like we would feel OK,’” Cynthia said, referring to Dollywood.

Barbara Ammons, a 45-year-old woman from nearby Etowah, Tennessee, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with Dolly’s face that she’d bought when she visited Dollywood two weeks earlier with her sister. On this day, she carried a small bouquet of flowers to place at the memorial before she had to go to work. “I’d cry and then I’d stop and then I’d cry and then I’d stop and then I had to get ready to go to work and I was like, I cannot keep doing this,” she said with a sad chuckle.

She wiped at her left eye and said: “It just doesn’t seem like we should be without her.”