A Solvang home with ties to the iconic Dolly Parton has hit the market for almost $2 million. 

The triplex property, a short walk away from downtown at 561 Alisal Road, is hard to miss. 

It features a small windmill adjacent to the front home, a stained glass window on top of the front door that reads “Dolly” with her butterfly symbol next to it, and a plaque on the white fence naming the house as the famous singer and businesswoman’s former home. 

The property was built in 1920 and hit the market in April for $1,995,000. The current property owner, Cris Lapp, is looking for a Parton fan to buy the property. 

“That is just me, I want a mega fan,” said Lapp, a real estate broker with Black Oak Homes and Mortgages.

Listings for the home tout the property as Parton’s former retreat home, a piece of musical history and “a rare Hollywood legacy located in the heart of Solvang.”

In addition to the property’s three-bedroom, two-bathroom front home, it also has a three-bedroom, two-bathroom upper rear unit and a one-bedroom, three-quarter-bathroom lower unit. Each unit has its own private, enclosed patio, according to the listing. 

Parton owned the home for 10 years, starting in 2004, SFGATE reported.

The units were used by Parton’s staff, and the property had lattice features and gold reflective film on windows to prevent paparazzi photos, according to Lapp.

The inside of the property was also full of hints that Parton was once there. 

Lapp used to live in the back house and said that upstairs was Parton’s makeup room, wig room and a dressing room area.

“Neighbors and people that would tend to the house before she came up, would come by and talk to me and said she would come up with her crew,” Lapp said. “…She used it as a weekend retreat, I guess.”

In the basement, he said he found more of Parton’s belongings, including western-themed home furnishings.

“She loved wooden angels and wooden tulips, which I have a lot of,” he said. 

When Lapp began leasing out the units, he would tell the tenants not to change anything inside.

“There’s a lot of stenciling of little hearts and stuff inside the unit,” he said. 

Lapp said he has owned the house for almost four years and purchased it as a temporary home while he and his partner built their “dream home” in Solvang.

He said he first found out about its ties to Parton during escrow, but was a little skeptical because he didn’t see anything on the property title.

“When a famous person owns a house, what they do is they scrub the title, meaning they don’t have any information on the title report,” Lapp said. “I was like ‘well that seems really weird.’”

However, his escrow agent at the time was able to confirm through permits that it once belonged to Dolly Parton Enterprises, Lapp said.

Lucy Padilla, escrow officer with First American Title, said to her understanding, the property was sold to a local family in 2014 and purchased from 561 Alisal Road Trust.

“The recorded deed shows Todd Gelfand as the trustee of The 561 Alisal Road Trust. He seems to be associated with Mrs. Parton,” Padilla told Noozhawk in an email.

Gelfand is listed as part of Parton’s crew as her business manager for the 2020 television special “A Holly Dolly Christmas,” according to IMDb.

After buying the home, Lapp restored the property, including the windmill, and added the stained glass. 

“I wanted to make sure she didn’t get erased from it, and I think Solvang needs more stuff for people to do,” he said.

The property has received a lot of attention and online buzz for its connection to Parton.

“We get a lot of lookie-loos,” Lapp said.  

Secret Solvang, a tour group company, featured the property on its social media as a place where Parton once lived, drawing surprise and skepticism from locals.

In a social media video, Secret Solvang’s founder, Wes Leslie, said Parton sold the Solvang property in 2014. 

“I don’t really know anything about the home. From what I have gathered, she never officially lived in the home, but it was an investment property that (the) family would occasionally use,” Leslie told Noozhawk in an email.

But for other residents, the idea that Parton once lived there has just been a questionable rumor.

Carol Lake, who works at the Elverhøj Museum of History & Art, a Solvang history museum and a longtime Solvang resident, told Noozhawk she would be very surprised if Parton even stayed there overnight. 

The property also has its very own Instagram page under the handle @dollys_house_solvang. The page is run by Lapp, who posts photos of the house and has chronicled its restoration, spanning back to 2022. 

Lapp is only offering tours of the house for interested buyers.