If you've been visiting Pigeon Forge in the fall for any stretch of time, you remember it. The weekend after Labor Day. Dollywood's Splash Country closed for the season, its parking lot and grounds transformed into something entirely different — row after row of pre-1972 street rods, customs, and classics gleaming in the September sun, their owners walking the grounds in the particular unhurried way that people walk when they've been doing something they love for a long time. The sound of loping cam profiles idling past. The smell of sunscreen and hot pavement and a faint trace of exhaust. And over 2,000 cars — many of them the finest examples of American hot rod craftsmanship in the country — gathered in the shadow of the Smoky Mountains for two days that the regulars started planning for twelve months in advance.
The Shades of the Past Hot Rod Roundup ran for 39 years. It was one of the premier events in the South — many would say the country. In 2022, it held its final show. The parking lot is used for something else now. The Shades of the Past Car Club has moved on. But the event left a mark on Pigeon Forge's automotive identity that still shapes the fall calendar today, and understanding its history gives context to everything that followed.
How It Started: Maryville to Pigeon Forge
In 1981, the Shades of the Past Car Club was ready to host its first rod run. The first two small events were held in Maryville. Both shows were successfully presented, and gave the club confidence to take a giant step. By 1983, the Gatlinburg hot rod roundup had ended. The club decided to try to fill that void by hosting a fall event in Pigeon Forge.
In 1983, they presented the Grand Run hoping to have 300 to 400 cars attend. They had exactly 1,000 cars registered for the first Pigeon Forge show. They gave away $1,000 and chose the top 15. The event was a great success. The crowd they drew and the business that was created elated the city. Most importantly, those in attendance loved the event and the word of mouth advertising was better than they could have imagined.
That first Pigeon Forge show — 1,000 cars when they expected 400 — is the story of the Shades of the Past in miniature. From the beginning, the demand outran the expectation. Over the next 26 years, they presented their Hot Rod Roundup at five different venues in Pigeon Forge. Each move was made to enable them to present their roundup to as many people as was possible with the least amount of inconvenience.
The final venue — Dollywood's Splash Country — was, by the organizers' own account, the best they'd ever had. The water park's seasonal close the day after Labor Day created a natural handoff: the entire parking lot and grounds became the Shades of the Past site for the following weekend, with the mountain backdrop and the proximity to Dollywood giving the event a setting no previous venue had matched.
What Made It Different
The Shades of the Past wasn't a general car show. It had a specific character — a pre-1972 rule that kept the focus on a particular era of American automotive culture, a quality standard that the Top 25 awards enforced with genuine rigor, and a community of regulars who treated the annual pilgrimage to Pigeon Forge as a standing commitment rather than a casual calendar entry.
The quality of the cars in attendance was truly second to none, with over 2,269 registered participants making this event one that should have been on everyone's list to see. The Top 25 awards — the most coveted recognition at the show — were distributed through a competitive selection process that acknowledged the full spectrum of the field: from the Top 25, the Magnificent 7 were held to a higher bar, and from there the proverbial noose tightened further.
The prizes themselves were legendary within the hot rod community. The signature giveaway — a 1932 Ford Hi-Boy Roadster, one of America's most highly regarded motor legends, provided by Alloway's Hot Rod Shop as the first-place prize — became one of the most anticipated annual giveaways in hot rod culture. Winning a '32 Ford Hi-Boy at the Shades of the Past was a story people told for decades. The second-place prize in the final year was $10,000 cash — significant money for a regional car show, and reflective of how seriously the organizers took the competitive component.
The Triple Crown of Rodding also called the Shades home. The Triple Crown of Rodding had its home at the Shades of the Past event, with founding and supporting companies Advanced Plating, Classic Instruments, and Vintage Air each taking home one of three incredible trophies representing each assemblage. The TCR's presence at the event gave it a national competitive stature that pure regional shows rarely achieve.
The Community Behind It
The statistic that tells the real story of the Shades of the Past isn't the car count or the prize money. It's the regulars.
For decades, families planned their fall vacations around the first weekend after Labor Day in Pigeon Forge. The same owners brought the same cars year after year, watched each other's builds evolve, celebrated wins together, and maintained friendships that existed primarily within the context of this single annual weekend. Children who attended the show with their parents eventually brought their own cars. Multiple generations of the same families showed up to the same venue in the same week of the same month, year after year, until the venue itself was no longer available.
It is the people that we have met that stand out as the most important treasure that we will carry forward. We have been richly blessed, far more than we deserve. Thanks friends, hot rod heroes one and all, for your support of the Shades over all these years. Those are the organizers' own words in their farewell message — written by a club that had been running this event since 1981 and chose to close it on their own terms rather than let it diminish.
Why It Ended
It was announced that the final year was due to Dollywood being unable to extend their contract to host the event at the Splash Country parking area, as the park closes for the season prior to this event.
The needs of Dollywood for expansion and the needs of the club having changed led to a match of needs, and the Shades of the Past Car Club opted to bring to a close a well-documented and experienced chapter of American hot rodding.
The timing matters: 2022 was the 39th running of the show, not the 40th. The club had been presenting the Hot Rod Roundup for 40 years, but 2022 was the 39th running — the 2020 show was lost to COVID-19. So the pandemic took one year, and the venue situation took the rest. The club made a considered decision: rather than find a lesser venue and diminish what they'd built, they ended it at Dollywood's Splash Country — their best venue — while the show was still at its best.
There is no other location comparable to Splash Country that would be suitable for their event. Therefore, they decided as a club to make the 39th event their final event.
A Change.org petition to save the event collected thousands of signatures. It didn't change the outcome, but it documented something important: the community that had built around this event was real, large, and deeply invested.
What Replaced It
The fall Pigeon Forge automotive calendar didn't collapse after 2022. The region has too deep a car culture for one event's closure to create a lasting void. Several shows have grown in the years since, picking up some of the audience the Shades left behind:
The Pigeon Forge Fall Rod Run continues in September at the LeConte Center, with its September 17–19, 2026 edition covering similar ground — classic cars, hot rods, a major swap meet, and the Parkway street show that spills well beyond the official venue. It's a different format and a different organizer, but it serves a similar community.
Smoky Mountain Street Dreams, held in September, has grown into one of the stronger post-Shades fall shows in the region — custom street rods and classics in the Pigeon Forge corridor on a date that deliberately targets the audience the Shades of the Past left behind.
The Smoky Mountain F-Body Fest, focusing on Camaros and Firebirds, and Ponies in the Smokies, the annual Mustang gathering, both represent the more marque-specific niche that the Shades' pre-1972 rule created space for.
None of these events is Shades of the Past. None of them has 39 years of accumulated community behind them, or the specific combination of competitive rigor, prize scale, and venue character that made the Roundup what it was. But the automotive culture of Sevier County is robust enough that the fall show calendar remains active and worth engaging with, even if it looks different than it did before September 2022.
What the Shades Left Behind
Car shows come and go in Pigeon Forge. The Shades of the Past Hot Rod Roundup ran longer, drew more consistently, and built a deeper community than almost any comparable event in the Southeast. It was one of the premier events in the South — many would say the country.
The club's farewell message, posted on their website after the final show, reads like the close of a chapter rather than a complaint. They thanked the city of Pigeon Forge, the venues, and most of all the participants — the people who showed up year after year with their cars and their families and their decades of shared history. They noted that the real treasure was the relationships. They meant it.
For anyone who attended the Shades of the Past and is looking for what the fall Pigeon Forge automotive calendar looks like now — the Fall Rod Run at the LeConte Center is the closest functional equivalent, and the September weekend still brings a particular energy to the Parkway that the Shades helped create and sustain for nearly four decades. That's a legacy that doesn't expire with the final event.
The Current Fall Automotive Calendar in Pigeon Forge
If you're planning a fall trip to the Smokies and want to build it around the automotive culture that the Shades of the Past helped establish, here's what's currently active:
Pigeon Forge Fall Rod Run — September 17–19, 2026 at the LeConte Center. The largest currently active fall car show in the Pigeon Forge area, with a full swap meet, Top 25 awards, $10,000 cash giveaway, and the famous Parkway street show. Admission $20 per day. Full details at pigeonforgerodruns.com.
Smoky Mountain Street Dreams — September 2026 at the LeConte Center area. Custom street rods and classic builds in the Shades of the Past tradition. Check the Pigeon Forge events calendar at pigeonforge.com for confirmed 2026 dates.
Great Smoky Mountain Jeep Invasion — August 20–22, 2026 at the LeConte Center. The Jeep-specific show with over 50,000 attendees, vendor expo, and Show & Shine competition. Admission $20 per day.
Smoky Mountain Overland Invasion — October 23–24, 2026 at the LeConte Center. First annual overland and adventure vehicle expo — the newest addition to the Pigeon Forge automotive calendar.
The fall automotive season in Pigeon Forge is alive. It just looks different than it did before September 2022. The Shades of the Past made it what it is.
If you're planning to be in the area for any of these fall events, we keep a small, hand-picked portfolio of cabins across the Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg area — take a look at what's available at smokiestays.com/cabins.
The Shades of the Past Hot Rod Roundup held its final event September 9–10, 2022, after 39 years. The event is not returning. For the current fall Pigeon Forge automotive event calendar, visit pigeonforgerodruns.com and pigeonforge.com/events.