Upper Cape
Crushed shell driveways in Bourne
The only Cape town on both sides of the canal, from Buzzards Bay to Cataumet, on ground the glacier left in a heap rather than a layer.
Bourne is the first town on the Cape and the only one that sits on both sides of the canal, which makes it unusual to work in. Half the driveways we see here are reached from roads that carry every car heading further east, and the other half sit down quiet lanes in Pocasset and Cataumet that a loaded truck has to be walked into carefully.
The ground matters more here than almost anywhere else we go. Bourne sits on the Sandwich Moraine, the ridge of material the Buzzards Bay ice lobe pushed up and left behind when it stalled. Moraine ground is not the clean sand people expect of Cape Cod. It is till: a jumbled mix of sand, clay, cobbles and boulders, dropped in place rather than sorted by meltwater.
What moraine ground does to a driveway
Digging turns up rock
Excavating a driveway on till is slower than on outwash sand, and it is normal to find cobbles and the occasional boulder that has to come out. We would rather tell you that before the machine arrives than surprise you with it halfway through.
Drainage is patchy, not uniform
Sand drains freely and clay does not, and moraine ground has both, sometimes within the same driveway. That is why a Bourne driveway can be bone dry at one end and hold a puddle at the other after the same rain.
The base has to bridge the difference
Where the ground changes underfoot, a properly compacted gravel base is what keeps the finished surface even. Skip it and the driveway settles unevenly, following the soil rather than the grade you wanted.
Where we work in Bourne
Buzzards Bay, Sagamore, Sagamore Beach, Monument Beach, Pocasset, Cataumet, Gray Gables and Bournedale. Both sides of the canal, including the mainland side that people forget is still Bourne.
Access is the thing worth mentioning when you call. Some of the village lanes down toward the water are narrow with nowhere to turn a truck, and a few driveways here are long enough that the material has to be moved twice. None of that is a problem, but it changes how we plan the day.
Crushed stone driveways in Bourne
Where stone earns its keep in Bourne
Bourne sits on the Buzzards Bay moraine, which gives it some of the most broken ground on the Upper Cape. Land falls away toward the canal on both sides, and a good number of driveways here pitch down toward the water rather than sitting level.
That is exactly the ground where crushed stone is the better answer. Three quarter inch stone is angular, so the pieces wedge against one another and stay where they are put. Shell on a slope creeps downhill a little every winter until the top of the driveway is thin and the bottom is deep.
Villages in Bourne
Each one has its own ground and its own quirks. These go into what that means for a driveway there.
Get an estimate
Driveway in Bourne needing work?
We are across Bourne to Orleans regularly. Tell us roughly how big the driveway is and we will come and look at it.
- Free, with no obligation after
- We look at the base, not just the surface
- Across Bourne to Orleans
