Initially, the village was called Pleasant Valley after the valley southwest of the village on the Old Bath Road, and also Cold Spring Valley because of an icy spring in the village park along the lake. The village is named for Lazarus Hammond, who laid out its streets and village square in 1807. Hammondsport occupies a scenic location at the southern end of the lake.
Hammondsport became a minor boomtown in the era beginning in 1833 with the completion of the Crooked Lake Canal connecting Keuka and Seneca Lakes. The first winery in the region, Pleasant Valley Wine Company, was founded in 1860. A Pleasant Valley champagne was awarded an honorable mention in a wine judging competition in Paris in 1867 and received a gold medal at the Vienna Exposition in 1873; the event put Hammondsport on the viticutural map.
The village prospered through the steamboat age beginning in the late 1830s. The local economy boomed with the entrance of railroads to the region in the last half of the nineteenth century, particularly as the local wine industry began to expand.
Exerpt from Persons, Places and Things In the Finger Lakes Region
by Emerson Klees
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