Although it might play second fiddle to its flashier neighbors Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Sevierville, Tennessee, is hardly a sleepy town. As the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains, it’s a thriving commercial hub where chain restaurants, hotels, and outlet malls seem to multiply overnight! Business is booming on nearly every corner as the hum of new development fills the air. That’s exactly why what sits at the northeast corner of Collier and Hurley Drives feels so out of place: an enormous, abandoned theater. Standing before it today, it’s hard not to wonder how such a grand place from the front could slip into such obvious obscurity.

Information is scarce, but the 1,700-seat¹, 48,000-square-foot Governor’s Palace Theater appears to have opened in 1998² as part of the greater Governor’s Crossing Mall development. The building featured an impressive facade reminiscent of Biltmore, but appears to have fallen on hard times after only a few years³. 

When it first opened, the Governor’s Palace Theater pulled out all the stops, hosting everything from elaborate musical productions to a live daytime game show emceed by none other than Bob Eubanks! For a while, it felt like the entertainment never stopped, but that golden era was short-lived. By 2007, the curtain had risen on a new act- Cirque de Chine, a two-hour showcase of Chinese acrobatics that transformed the rebranded Smoky Mountain Palace⁴. 

The Smoky Mountain Palace’s final show seems to have been Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas of Life, a two-month, eighty-show experience that ran in 2015⁵. It was the first new show at the renovated center, which had been vacant since about 2011⁶. For a brief time, the Palace flickered back to life as if it were trying one last time to recapture the magic of its earliest days.

A decade later, the grand Governor’s Palace Theater or Smoky Mountain Palace sits silent once again. The future of the once-bustling venue remains uncertain as a “For Sale” sign remains as a melancholy footnote to its showbiz past. A “Cirque” labelscar still crowns the building’s old stage fly. Time has not been kind to the structure: faded Thomas Kinkade banners still cling stubbornly to the marquee, plywood boards obscure its entryways, and the building’s elegant awnings sag shredded thanks to the relentless Smoky Mountain wind.

Today, the abandoned Governor’s Palace Theater stands like a monument to ambition and impermanence. What was once a glittering destination for visitors to the Smokies is now a hulking shell with a presence overshadowed by the neon glow of nearby attractions. The place was built to dazzle, and for a while, it did! In the wake of the Titanic and the Hatfields and McCoys just down the road, though, the crowds moved on, the lights went dark, and its story faded into memory. 

Sources Cited
1 Wood, N.P. (2001, May 14). Defunct Sevier County Theater OWes Opryland Unit Almost $3 MLN., Suit Says. The Nashville Post. Web. Retrieved October 21, 2025. 
2 179 Collier Drive (n.d.). Realtor.com. Web. Retrieved October 21, 2025. 
3 Wood, N.P. (2001, May 14). Defunct Sevier County Theater Owes Opryland Unit Almost $3 MLN., Suit Says. The Nashville Post. Web. Retrieved October 21, 2025. 
4 Cirque de Chine (2012, December 3). Inside Sevierville [Sevierville]. Web. Retrieved October 21, 2025. 
5 Christmas show by Kinkade sets 80 performances (2015, October 15). The Mountain Press [Sevierville]. p. A3. 
6 Michael, D. (2015, December 2). Reader raves about new holiday show. The Mountain Press [Sevierville]. p. A7.