Local city information for Hammond, LA

Hammond is the largest city in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 17,639 at the 2000 census. It is home to Southeastern Louisiana University. The city was the home base for production of the first season of the NBC television series In the Heat of the Night.

Hammond is the principal city of the Hammond Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Tangipahoa Parish.

The city is named for Peter Hammond (1797-1870)—possibly anglicized from Peter av Hammerdal (Peter of Hammerdal)—a Swedish immigrant who first settled the area around 1818. Peter, a sailor, had been briefly imprisoned by the British at Dartmoor Prison during the Napoleonic Wars; he broke jail, made his way back to the sea, and later left his ship in New Orleans, where he used his savings to buy then-inexpensive land northwest of Lake Pontchartrain. There he started a plantation to grow trees, which he made into masts, charcoal, and other products for the maritime industry in New Orleans. He transported the goods first to the head of navigation on the Natalbany River at Springfield, Louisiana.

In 1854, the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad (later the Illinois Central Railroad, now Canadian National Railway) came through the area, launching the city's emergence as a commercial and transport center. The point where the railroad met Peter's trail to Springfield was at first known as Hammond's Crossing. Peter Hammond is buried on the east side of town under the Hammond Oak along with his wife, three daughters, and a "favorite slave boy" (see inset showing the spreading oak at gravesite).

During the American Civil War, the city was a shoemaking center for the Confederacy. It later became a major shipping point for strawberries, earning it the title of "the Strawberry Capital of America".

Today, Hammond is intersected by Interstates 12 and 55. Its airport has a long runway which serves as a backup landing site for Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport and serves as a major training site for the Louisiana Air National Guard. Approximately 15 miles south of Hammond, on both the railroad and Interstate 10, lies Port Manchac, which provides egress via Lake Ponchartrain with the Gulf of Mexico. The combination of highway-rail-air-sea transportation has transformed modern Hammond from a strawberry capitol to a transportation capital. The city hosts numerous warehouses and is a distribution point for Walmart and other businesses, and Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond offers the state's only academic degree in supply chain management.

The 19th-century shoemaking industry was the work of Charles Emery Cate, who bought land in the city in 1860 for a home, a shoe factory, tannery and sawmill. Toward the end of the war, Cate laid out the city grid, using the rail line as a guide and naming several of the streets after his sons.

After the American Civil War, light industry and commercial activities were attracted to the town. By the end of the century, the town had become a stopping point for northerners traveling south and for New Orleanians heading north to escape summer yellow fever outbreaks.

In the 1920s, David William Thomas edited a weekly newspaper in Hammond prior to moving to Minden, the seat of Webster Parish. There, he was elected mayor in 1936.

In 1932 Hodding Carter founded the now-defunct Hammond Daily Courier, which he left in 1939 to move to Greenville, Mississippi, where he later received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1953, John Desmond opened the first architectural firm in Hammond. He was chief architect of the Tangipahoa Parish School Board for some two decades before he relocated to Baton Rouge.

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans attorney, political activist, and state government watchdog C.B. Forgotston relocated to Hammond in 2006.

Hammond's proximity to New Orleans and Baton Rouge - less than an hour from each - has begun to stimulate growth. Tangipahoa Parish is becoming one of the newest suburbs to both cities. Hammond and Tangipahoa Parish are now among the fastest-growing cities and parishes in Louisiana. There is an abundance of new development, both commercial and residential, as well as numerous hotels which absorb overflowing demand for rooms near major events in New Orleans.

Among the city's cultural attractions is the Tangipahoa African American Heritage Museum & Black Veteran Archives. This is one of the destinations on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

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