2-tank trip takes Western Pennsylvanians to hobbit resort built by Penn State grad

PIGEON FORGE, Tenn. — It’s an eight-hour, 500-mile drive from Pittsburgh, but for fans of “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter,” a visit to a Middle Earth-inspired mini-resort might fit the bill, especially as leaves burst with fall color.

Mountain Shire offers travelers perhaps the best approximation of J.R.R. Tolkein’s fictional realm outside of the New Zealand filming location — now a tourist destination — used in the Academy Award-winning “LOTR” films.

A 15-minute drive from Pigeon Forge’s Great Smoky Mountains Parkway, Mountain Shire is located on a hillside, up a gravel road not far from Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

In early August, on our last night in Pigeon Forge after spending time at Dollywood, riding mountain coasters and taking old-time family photos, we made our way up to Mountain Shire with my 11- and 15-year-old sons. They were curious about what to expect.

Instructions from the tiny home resort encourage visitors to park in front of a large “hobbit wall” in the parking lot. It turns out that the wall, made of log ends, acts as a divider between the modern world and Mountain Shire’s village of eight decorated-for-maximum-effect tiny homes. Look carefully, and it turns out each house is actually a fifth wheel RV that’s been disguised to obscure its true nature.

Eager to see what Mountain Shire had to offer, the 15-year-old hurried through the human sized opening in the hobbit wall while the 11-year-old, squatting, toddled through a hobbit-sized passage.

Mountain Shire’s attention to detail is striking. Bare vines cling to some of the structures, while other exteriors are covered by what appears to be leafy old growth. Each of the homes has a round door, just like Bilbo and Frodo Baggins’ Hobbiton home in director Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies.

With a family of four and mother-in-law along for the trip, we chose the largest accommodation, the Magical Wizard Tiny House, clearly intended to evoke a Harry Potter vibe.

Entering through the large, round door, this lodging bursts with character. Battery-powered LED candles hang from the ceiling. Copies of J.K. Rowling’s books fit neatly on a shelf. A Hogwarts castle-shaped lamp rests on a side table. Wands fill a beer stein. And just as in the Potter stories, behind a door and under a staircase, there’s a twin mattress, just like the cupboard under the stairs Harry slept in at the Dursley’s home. (Thankfully, halfway up the stairs to a loft that contains a double mattress, there’s a second hidey-hole with a twin mattress and a wall-mounted TV, so each kid got a special place to sleep, avoiding squabbles over who got the “cool” sleeping nook.)

The idea for Mountain Shire came from Joe McCarthy, a 1987 Penn State graduate, who launched his first enterprises in State College while in college. Those efforts included two miniature golf courses, baseball batting cages and a hot dog cart. They’re gone now — one minigolf is now a Walmart, the other a junk yard, McCarthy said — but they offered opportunities to create settings close enough to his dream project.

“If I could, I would build a botanical garden, but it’s extremely hard to sell tickets to that,” McCarthy, 60, said. “I’ve always been interested in the idea of, not utopia, but a paradise garden. Whenever I travel, I mostly go on garden tours. My miniature golf courses were very beautiful and won a bunch of design awards because I’ve always been able to arrange things.”

After his State College days, McCarthy built go-kart tracks, arcades and laser tag arenas. His Gator Golf on International Drive in Orlando, Fla., near Disney and Universal theme parks, still operates, though he no longer owns it.

It was always the landscaping aspect of those projects that held the most appeal.

“Mountain Shire started off conceptually as a garden,” McCarthy said. “When I saw the opening of the first ‘Lord of the Rings’ (movie), I was like, I think I’m a hobbit. … A lot of this stuff (used for decorating the interior and exterior of the hobbit houses) is scrounged. I just buy stuff and put it in a pile and it sits in the parking lot and I’m always able to find the exact right piece. All the wood in the retaining wall — it’s all repurposed, recycled, reused stuff. It’s just a big do-it-yourself project.”

For Mountain Shire, McCarthy is 50-50 partner with his nephew Justin Kersey, a former technical consultant in the corporate world. They started construction on Mountain Shire in 2020, with the first units available for reservations in late 2021.

“Joe does the majority of the design work and I run the business,” Kersey said. “He’s the creative side. He has a very good eye for getting people’s attention and decorating.”

Kersey said there are dozens, if not hundreds, of hobbit houses throughout the United States that can be rented on Airbnb or Vrbo. But it was a figure they saw about New Zealand tourism that spurred their interest in pursuing the hobbit theme for Mountain Shire.

“Thirteen percent of all travel to New Zealand is people going to the Hobbiton set,” Kersey said. “That was a pretty good indicator we (were on the right track).”

Kersey said guests stay two nights on average, with prices fluctuating with the seasons, higher when there’s a lot of demand in June, July, August and October and lower in the off-season (January, February). The occupancy rate averages 85% year-round, but it can be 100% in high season.

“We get a wide mix of people, quite a few younger couples, maybe in their late 20s, early 30s, that don’t have kids,” he said. “Oftentimes they come with small dogs — DINKS (dual income, no kids) with a dog. My favorite is the grandma who comes with grandkids. That’s pretty common. We get people who cosplay and dress up.”

When the “Barbie” movie came out in 2023, the Mountain Shire owners made one unit into a Barbie house.

“After he built it, Joe and I felt like it didn’t feel right amongst all these other hobbit houses and it didn’t have a super-strong response,” Kersey said. That house is now a Zen hobbit house with an East Asian vibe.

In addition to the eight existing tiny homes at Mountain Shire, McCarthy and Kersey are building three more wizard-themed houses. Instead of using a fifth wheel, these will be freestanding structures with foundations that will sleep up to six people.

Located further up the hill from the existing cottages, these new lodging options are expected to be available for stays this fall. (Kersey regularly posts construction updates on the Mountain Shire YouTube page.)

Beyond those buildings, Kersey said they have two additional lots, and they may buy more lots for further expansion.

“We’re thinking about moving into something more like a steel-framed treehouse that makes you feel immersed amongst the trees,” Kersey said.

McCarthy said his aesthetic is “English garden style gone wild” mixed with “the way Japanese people arrange rocks and flowers.” When building, he eschews “measure twice and cut once” in favor of what he imagines to be hobbit construction practices.

“They don’t spend a lot of time measuring, so I don’t like to measure,” McCarthy said. “If you look at some of these structures, you’ll be like, ‘Man, that is crooked.’ People who are accomplished carpenters struggle with that. But I guess and I cut. You wouldn’t want me to build your house.”

McCarthy studied abroad while at Penn State, including at an art school in Rome for a semester.

“I wasn’t an artist because I can’t draw and they don’t let you garden at art school; but I’ve seen a lot of gardens, and I just make notes of things that I like,” he said. “God has created everything beautiful, and I just rearrange it. None of this is reinventing the wheel, it’s just rearranging stuff that exists.”