Calumet Excavating

About Calumet Excavating

The name carries the old Calumet region with it, the flat industrial belt that runs along the lakeshore west of here, but the work happens on Chesterton's quieter side — the township roads past the last subdivision, where a homeowner's own shovel won't touch a foot of wind-packed snow. Calumet Excavating brings the same skid-steers and truck blades it uses for grading and drainage work the rest of the year and points them at driveways, farm lanes, and gravel lots once the heavy bands of snow off Lake Michigan start piling up. A farm lane that would take three passes by hand gets opened in one pass with a truck blade, ice that forms where a field drains toward the road gets salted before it becomes a problem, and parking areas for the town's smaller businesses get pushed back to the property line so nothing is left to melt and refreeze. It's equipment built for a bigger scale than a driveway usually needs, and out past the edge of downtown, that turns out to be exactly the scale winter runs on here.