Above the town, at the head of a deep wooded gorge, Castle Campbell sits where two burns meet. The burns are called the Burn of Care and the Burn of Sorrow, and they join below the castle to form the Dollar Burn. The castle itself was originally Castle Gloom. Whoever named all this was not having a good century, but the walk up to it is one of the best short walks in central Scotland.
Dollar sits at the eastern end of the four Hillfoots Villages, tucked between the steep southern edge of the Ochil Hills and the River Devon. The older part of the town, beneath the castle, is built of two-storey stone houses, the oldest dating from the mid-seventeenth century. Behind it all rises King's Seat Hill, 648 metres, a long climb up through the glen for anyone who wants the Ochils proper rather than the woodland below.
The glen walk is the one most people come for. It is about two miles round, an hour and a half to two hours, on compacted-dirt paths that climb steeply through the gorge past waterfalls and chasms cut into volcanic rock. In winter it is, by every honest account, very muddy, so bring boots that can take it. The place has drawn visitors since Victorian times and supports red squirrels, badgers, deer, woodpeckers, owls and dippers, along with lichens and ferns of national importance.
Bridge Street handles the food. Dollar's Deli at number 62 is a licensed delicatessen selling freshly made sandwiches and cakes, deli meats, cheeses, olives, bread, beer and wine, and it does hampers and outside catering; it calls itself "an award-winning licensed Deli at the heart of the community." A few doors along at 31 is the Baker's Shop, and Bridge Street Kitchen handles the coffee.
For a sit-down meal you have a choice. The Forager, which opened in December 2022, is a modern gastropub with a private dining room. The Ochil Arms does British cooking in comfortable surroundings, the Royal Oak leans on live music and sport, and No5 Inn and Restaurant has been run by Alison, David and Darren since 2006. The Castle Campbell Hotel on Bridge Street, a fixture for generations, has closed.
The town owes much of its shape to Dollar Academy, founded in 1818 on a bequest from John McNabb, a sea captain and ship-owner. Its buildings were designed by William Henry Playfair, and the school pulled well-off families to the town and made it the handsomest of the Hillfoots. Its former pupils include James Dewar, who invented the vacuum flask, and the novelist Iain Banks.
There is no railway now; the Devon Valley line closed in 1964, and the nearest railheads are around Stirling and Alloa. Dollar sits on the A91, about twelve miles east of Stirling, with Hillfoots buses running the same corridor.
The name has nothing to do with money. It comes most likely from Pictish words for a water-meadow, which is a quieter thing to be named after than the castle, the gloom, the care and the sorrow all sitting on the hill above.