Hammond, Louisiana

Hammond was founded in eighteen eighteen by a Swedish immigrant named Peter Hammond, who settled here to harvest timber for ship masts and to produce pine tar for naval stores. The settlement stayed modest until eighteen fifty-four, when the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad cut through and suddenly Hammond was a shipping hub. Italian immigrants followed in the late eighteen hundreds, and they planted strawberries in the sandy Tangipahoa soil.

By the nineteen thirties, hundreds of railroad cars of berries were rolling north out of Hammond every spring, earning it the title Strawberry Capital of America. Hammond Junior College opened in nineteen twenty-five and eventually grew into Southeastern Louisiana University, which now enrolls roughly fourteen thousand students and anchors the city's economy.