Dolly Parton murals pop up around Denver metro area — where to find them

We may not be renaming our airport after her like Nashville, but Denver loved Dolly Parton too, and now her face has been showing up on walls all over town, and the tributes keep growing.

It started with the mural at Fire on the Mountain, the chicken wing spot on West 32nd Street in the Highlands. Artist Vinni Alfonso painted Dolly prominently at the top of a music-legends mural on the restaurant’s exterior wall last October after she won an Instagram poll by more than 100 votes. After Dolly’s death in August, the wall became an impromptu memorial, with fans leaving flowers, candles and handwritten notes beneath her image. Co-owner Andrea West told 9NEWS the spot has given people a place to process their grief together. “I think people are kind of lost,” West said. “They don’t really know what to do with that grief, and they want to be somewhere that they can just pay a little tribute.”

Now local artist Tommy Nahulu is adding to the cityscape. A Denver Chalk Art Festival veteran, Nahulu has been painting dedicated Dolly murals around the metro, including one near the Fillmore on Clarkson and Colfax, with another planned for the town of Lyons. It’s part of a growing wave of tributes that 9NEWS reports are “surfacing throughout the Denver metro area” as fans and artists continue honoring Dolly’s legacy in paint.

If you want to pay your respects to the Queen of Country without leaving Denver, the Fire on the Mountain mural on West 32nd is the easiest stop, and you might as well grab some wings while you’re there.