Hammond is the largest city in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, United States, located 45 miles (72 km) east of Baton Rouge and 45 miles (72 km) northwest of New Orleans. Its population was 20,019 in the 2010 U.S. census, and 21,359 at the 2020 population estimates program. Hammond is home to Southeastern Louisiana University, is the principal city of the Hammond metropolitan statistical area, which includes whatever of Tangipahoa Parish and is a share of the New Orleans-Metairie-Hammond combined statistical area.

The city is named for Peter Hammond (1798–1870), the surname anglicized from Peter av Hammerdal (Peter of Hammerdal) — a Swedish immigrant who first granted the area around 1818. Peter, a sailor, had been briefly imprisoned by the British at Dartmoor Prison during the Napoleonic Wars. He escaped during a prison riot, made his way encourage to sea, and later upon arrived in New Orleans. Hammond used his savings to purchase then-inexpensive estate northwest of Lake Pontchartrain. There, he started a plantation to cultivate trees, which he made into masts, charcoal, and further products for the maritime industry in New Orleans. He transported the goods by oxcart to the head of navigation on the Natalbany River at Springfield. He owned at least 30 slaves before the Civil War. Peter Hammond at a loose end his profusion during the war, as Union soldiers raided his property.

In 1854, the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad (later the Illinois Central Railroad, now Canadian National Railway) came through the area, launching the town’s emergence as a advertisement and transport center. The tapering off where the railroad met the trail to Springfield was at first known as Hammond’s Crossing. Peter Hammond’s grave is close the center of town under the Hammond Oak, along taking into account the graves of his wife Caroline Hammond (née Tucker), three of their children, and a favorite slave boy. The Hammond Oak is a aficionada tree of the Live Oak Society.

During the Civil War, the city was a shoe-making center for the Confederate States Army. The shoe-making industry was the take action of Charles Emery Cate, who bought home in the city in 1860 for a home, a shoe factory, a tannery, and a sawmill. Toward the fade away of the war, Cate laid out the town’s grid, using the rail descent as a guide and naming several of the streets after his sons. Also, Cate Street is named for him.