Residents of the Snoqualmie Valley town of Carnation, Wash. have made their love of golf known for nearly 60 years. Their local course – known initially as Carnation Golf Course and later Blue Heron Golf Course – could always count on its tee sheets being full, at least until the place closed in 2024.
Not two years later, Kyle Wiggins, with assistance from Dan Tachell – the son of Bob Tachell, the course’s original designer and owner – have been leading an effort to revitalize the course to the beloved local fixture it had always been.
It is now known as Tolt Golf Club, the first word reflecting the original Lushootseed-derived name of the surrounding town.
Already accomplished at the new Tolt has been a remodeling of the clubhouse and driving range, with plenty more upgrades and purchases planned for the coming years. As of May 2026, Tolt is already up and running to some capacity and, even with some scattered damage still visible from winter floods, has attracted hometown hitters in droves.
“Everybody’s super excited it’s back open,” said Wiggins, eagerly. “All these people missed the course and all the history – it's been around since 1967.”
Numbers exist to back that claim. Throughout the past few months, amidst news of the new-look Tolt, Wiggins claims to have received over 1,700 emails inquiring about when the course would open, as well as over 200 job applications from under-18 teenagers.
“We still have more kids coming in every day who want to work here,” he said. “It’s great for the community.”
The golf course fits in with Wiggins’ personal approach to the game.
“I'm a huge fan of WA Golf Youth on Course,” he says, about immediately signing up to be a participating course in that program, which offers $5 rounds of golf to golfers age 6-18. “Both my kids have been in the program for years. It's a great way to expose kids to the game in an affordable way. It helps families spend time together as well. We want our course to be super family friendly.”
It has all happened over the past six months or so. Wiggins bought the golf course in December 2025 from the local event-running Remlinger family, who had purchased Blue Heron through a foreclosure sale in 2024. Tolt’s prior ownership change was in 2012, when it adopted the Blue Heron name.
Under the Remlinger ownership, the golf course became increasingly unrecognizable without precise maintenance, though the family did cut certain fairways at two inches to allow local golfing kids to get a few swings in.
Wiggins is a two-plus decade resident of the area with a career in construction administration, and for nearly 30 years has been the Battalion Chief with the South Snohomish County Fire Department.
He entered the golf course ownership fray via his connection with Dan Tachell, who coaches Wiggins’ son in golf at Cedarcrest High School. Tachell had himself owned the course after his father and was the seller in 2012.
“I was thinking ahead, to start looking for projects and challenges for the next chapter of my life,” Wiggins said, about the reason for buying the golf course, with his retirement just around the corner.
Tachell and Wiggins approached the Remlingers about the family's plans for the course. Considering heavily its other local obligations, including Remlinger Farms, the family decided to finance the course to Wiggins on Dec. 1, 2025, clearing the way for renovation and remodeling plans to commence.
Residents of the valley need no reminders of what happened shortly after that date though, not least of which is Wiggins. One of the largest atmospheric rivers in the history of the Pacific Northwest caused catastrophic floods, severely damaging much of Tolt’s bones Wiggins had hoped to build on.
“Wiped everything out, went higher than it’s ever been,” he said of the intense terrestrial torrent. “Took out the cart barn, all the carts, the lawnmowers. There was six feet-plus of water in the clubhouse.”
The new covered driving range has Trackman in each stall.
Mercifully, though, the amount of silt left over from the floods wasn’t as particularly devastating, though it did fill and damage what had been freshly aerated greens.
But Wiggins and his crew went straight to work in rebuilding and remodeling, extensively cleaning out bunkers and trimming down 10-inch-tall overgrown grass. A few superintendents from other Western Washington golf courses also lent their hands.
Tolt went on to flood a few other times – given its proximity to the Snoqualmie River – and each provided minor setbacks. But the clubhouse and pro shop are now as good as new, as is the covered, 20-bay, patio-furnished driving range, at which guests can order food and drinks through a QR code. Some residual silt from floods remains present, but Wiggins says the course is about 80 percent of the way healthy and should be fully back come June.
The original history will not be forgotten, either. Emblazoned on the freshly painted walls inside the new-look clubhouse is an enlarged photo of Bob Tachell from days gone by, in which the original head man holds a Ping Eye iron, a piece of equipment considered vintage by today’s standards.
Just about 60 years have passed since the elder Tachell opened the place for business, a fact not lost on its current owners. According to Wiggins, Superintendent Will Baker is already plotting a modification or two to some parts of the course, including select greens and teeing areas. Some fairways have already narrowed, by way of the intentional growing of native grass in their port and starboard sides.
Top-down ambitions at Tolt Golf Club are high, and plans for new maintenance equipment and rebuilding of the flood-destroyed cart barn are certainly on the list, too. But first, Wiggins will let nature do what work it can do for him.
“We’re gonna get it back to 100 percent shape first, then we’ll start working on the other stuff,” he says.
