Tangipahoa Parish

Tangipahoa Parish (French: Paroisse de Tangipahoa) is a parish located in the state of Louisiana, one of the Florida Parishes. The parish seat is Amite City, The major city is Hammond. As of the 2010 census, the population was 121,097. Tangipahoa comes from an Acolapissa word meaning “ear of corn” or “those who gather corn.” The Hammond Metropolitan Statistical Area includes all of Tangipahoa Parish.

Tangipahoa Parish was created by Louisiana Act 85 on March 6, 1869, during the Reconstruction era. The parish was assembled from territories taken from Livingston Parish, St. Helena Parish, St. Tammany Parish, and Washington Parish. It was named after the Tangipahoa River and the historic Tangipahoa Native American people of this area. Tangipahoa is the youngest parish in the Florida Parishes region of southern Louisiana.

The parish has a total area of 823 square miles (2,130 km2), of which 791.2 square miles (2,000 km2) of it is land and 33 square miles (85 km2) of it (3.99%) is water. Most of the parish south of Ponchatoula consists of Holocene coastal swamp and marsh—gray-to-black clays of high organic content and thick peat beds underlying freshwater marsh and swamp.

Tangipahoa Parish is the 21st largest Parish in Louisiana by total area.