Notable local landmarks include the parkland around Wolf Lake and the Horseshoe Hammond riverboat casino.

Part of the Rust Belt, Hammond has been industrial almost from its inception but is also home to a campus of Purdue University and numerous historic districts.

The first European-descended residents arrived around 1847 to settle on land between the Grand and Little Calumet Rivers, on the south end of Lake Michigan.

According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, George Henry Hammond, a pioneer in the use of refrigerated railcars for the transport of fresh meat, first used this method with his small packing company in Detroit, Michigan.

In the early 1870s, he built a new plant in northern Indiana along the tracks of the Michigan Central Railroad.

The company's large packing house in Hammond rivaled those located at the Union Stock Yard in Chicago.

By the middle of the 1880s, when it built a new plant in Omaha, Nebraska, Hammond was slaughtering over 100,000 cattle a year and owned a fleet of 800 refrigerator cars.

[10] On June 22, 1918, the Hammond circus train wreck occurred about 5.5 miles (8.9 km) east of the city, killing 86 and injuring 127 persons.

[11] The downtown Hammond shopping district along State Street and Hohman Avenue included major chains such as Sears and J. C. Penney.

[13] The building which housed the Goldblatt's store had been purchased by the Chicago-based retailer in 1931 and operated until 1982 when it closed due to bankruptcy.

[14] The Pullman Standard Car Company built M4 Sherman tanks in Hammond during World War II.

[18] According to the 1960 United States census Hammond's population reached a record high of 111,698 residents.

Hammond's economy, on the other hand, depended on light manufacturing, transportation & warehousing, retail, banking & insurance, healthcare, hospitality & food service, and construction.

[20] Prominent manufacturing companies in Hammond include Unilever's soap factory, Atlas Tube, Cargill food processing, Munster Steel, Lear Seating Corporation, Jupiter Aluminum, Tri-State Automation, and Dover Chemical.

[22] The Hammond Redevelopment Commission announced plans in June 2016 for a $12 million sports complex to be built on the site of the former mall.

[24] The city sits within the boundaries of the former Lake Chicago, and much of its land area consists of former dune and swale terrain that was subsequently leveled.

Most of the city is on sandy soil with a layer of black topsoil that varies from non-existent to several feet (a meter or more) thick.

According to the city, those businesses employing 200 or more employees in Hammond are:[31] The following single properties and national historic districts are listed on the National Register of Historic Places: Hammond Public Library, located at 564 State Street, includes the Suzanne G. Long Local History Room.

However, four years later, when the NFL decided to reduce the number of teams, it did so by simply folding smaller franchises.

The court handles not only local ordinance violations and certain minor criminal matters, but also a significant portion of the debt collection and eviction actions brought in Lake County.

Other cities and towns in Northwest Indiana that use the Hammond numbering system are Whiting, Munster and Highland.

Amtrak, the national passenger rail system, provides twice-daily service in both directions, operating its Wolverine through the Hammond–Whiting station between Chicago and Pontiac, Michigan, just north of Detroit.

The only hospital in Hammond was Franciscan St. Margaret Health on Stateline Road, across the street from Calumet City, Illinois.

It is an accredited chest pain center serving Northwest Indiana and the south suburbs of Chicago.