People are beginning to discover remote town

By LARRY LANGE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

For generations, Carnation has remained largely isolated from the rest of the hustle and bustle of the Puget Sound region.

For starters, it's not easy to reach. From Seattle a drive to town takes an hour on Ames Lake Road or Tolt Hill Road, both of which are reached by the Redmond-Fall City Road.

Both roads are good but are sinuous, two-lane affairs that discourage high speeds and passing.

When the two rivers flood -- a frequent occurrence -- the town can be quickly shut off from the outside world.

"This place is like an island when it floods," Enlow says.

Isolation helped keep the town small, and the roads discouraged homeowners from commuting to job centers in Bellevue or Seattle. Far from the madding crowds, Carnation residents were content with their town, and they saw no reason to encourage new development.

Even today, traffic is sparse enough that the town still doesn't have a single traffic light. The last big building project in town was the Tolt Towne Center, a small mall containing a QFC supermarket, two restaurants and two shops. When ground was broken in 1986 it was the first retail development in town built in the last 20 years.

The lack of sewers further limited the amount of development. The town could have added sewers but "nobody wants it. Nobody wants the city to grow," says Dolores Schroeder, a longtime Snoqualmie Valley resident who lives a few blocks off Tolt Avenue.

Population growth in the valley focused to the south near Snoqualmie, where Weyerhaeuser began selling off former timberland for subdivisions, and north at Duvall, which opened the door to new development by building a sewer system and treatment plant.

But small can be beautiful to many, and Carnation is being rediscovered. Between 1980 and 1990, the town grew by 330 people. It's a small number but translates into a 36 percent increase in population, and that doesn't include those who moved into the areas surrounding the town.

Many of the newcomers are fleeing even modest-size cities elsewhere around the Sound. "We were having it take us 20 minutes to drive three blocks to get to a grocery store," says Barb Harter, who runs the cash register and the coffee grinder at Sandy's Espresso on Tolt Avenue.

Harter, husband Mike and their daughters moved here 10 years ago from Lynnwood. After touring the town they were smitten.

"We drove out here and that's it. . . . People are friendly. You can still buy a house with acreage, there's still that around," Harter says. The couple bought a home on Stillwater Hill, north of town. "It's really nice. You can't see in your neighbor's window."

Continued:

• Small town has a big heart
• Community has an easygoing, wholesome air