User:Calumetman

Hi, I Mark. I call myself Calumetman, because: 1) I live in South Chicago Neighborhood, which I claim as the true Gateway to Calumet.

2) I can identify with the spirit of the native people who once populated the region for thousands of years before Pioneers, Settlers, and Developers came, moved them away and mindlessly destroyed the original beauty of this environment.

The Calumet is a unique midwestern geographical region formed 12,000 years ago from the constant advance and retreat of the Wisconsin Glacier from the north. It's northern boundaries extend from South Chicago along the rim of Lake Michigan and into Indiana as far as Michigan City. From its coastal boundaries it spans out landward forming a crecent; west along W. 95th St. to Burnside before turning south along Interstate 57, encompassing the length of the Little Calumet River and reaching eastward, as far as Portage, Indiana. In the nineteenth century, the region developed slowly. While ecologically diverse, the land north of the Valparaiso Moraine offered poor sites for agriculture. Consequently, the Calumet lacked the prosperity of the rural counties west of Chicago.

Centuries before the City of Chicago was settled, the Calumet was known for abundant wildlife, the Calumet marshes were the heart of one delicately balanced, vast wet prairie system, mixed wetland and sand savanna prairies, swales, dunes, fens, granite ridges and beaches at the south end of (Lake Chicago) what became Lake Michigan, formed from the final retreating of the Wisconsin Glacier and spanning roughly 22,500 acres in Illinois. Hundreds of varieties of forbs, trees, and shrubs covered large areas providing shelter and nesting sites for numerous migrating birds and water fowl.

Imagine standing along the the sand bar of the Calumet River, but instead of the the Chicago city skyline a gleaming white glacial expanse dominates the entire horizon to the north.

The name Calumet comes from the Native American (Potowatomi) term for peace pipe, pronounced "Callimich" by English settlers, and "Callimick" by the French before them. These native peoples used the land for hunting and sustained several seasonal settlements along it's waterways. They maintained land in a constant state for thousands of years. In northwest Indiana, the marsh system continued from Illinois divided only by a subsequent State Line. Indiana also adopted the name of "Calumet" for its complex of marshes off the southwest corner of Lake Michigan. Together it became know as the Calumet Region, although discrepencies as to the exact boundaries would eventually come about over time as different European residential settlements developed and spread at the dawn of the Industrial Age, which would change this once-verdant region forever. First railroads traversed the marshes, enabling industry to grow. With the increase in population the southern Lake Michigan regions so did the garbage industry. The low-lying areas in the Calumet Region were sacrificed as dump sites for industrial and municipal waste, not only for the region, but Chicago at large. Hyde Lake's vast size was reduced from 520 acres to 120 acres in the 1890's. Marshes at Eggers Woods Forest Preserve and Powderhorn Lake Forest Preserve were once connected to Wolf Lake but are now miles apart. Poured off slag waste and concrete from the U.S. Steel site eventually built a new shoreline a mile away from the original, encompassing over 500 acres. Of the +22,000 acres of wetland that used to meander across Lake Calumet, only 500 remain due to hyper-industrialization, landfilling and dredging. Nevertheless, even today, in the midst of such hyper-industrialization, the biodiversity remains some of the highest of all the Great Lakes. Today the struggle continues as residents and various action agencies in the Calumet Region strive to save remnant habitats and endangered wildlife from further degradation through clean up and revitalization efforts, encouraging area industry to adopt the safest operating standards, teaching the community sustainable practices, and legislating an end to Waste Managements relentless push for more wholesale landfilling.