Amite City, Louisiana

Amite City sits at the southern end of the I-Fifty-Five corridor, the parish seat of Tangipahoa Parish in southeastern Louisiana. The town takes its name from the Amite River nearby. The word comes either from a Choctaw term meaning red ant or from the French word for friendship, depending on which historian you ask.

The town itself grew up along the same New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad that built McComb and Magnolia, which pushed through this part of Louisiana in the eighteen fifties. It was incorporated in eighteen sixty-one. When Tangipahoa Parish was created in eighteen sixty-nine, Amite City was chosen as its seat. The parish name is Acolapissa, meaning those who gather corn. This whole stretch of country, from Holmes County, Mississippi down to Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, was shaped by a single antebellum railroad line running straight toward New Orleans.