The Friendship Oak has lost all its leaves to two hurricanes, Camille and Katrina, and is still here at more than 500 years old by the University of Southern Mississippi's count. It stands on the university's Gulf Park campus in Long Beach, a southern live oak 59 feet tall with a crown 155 feet across. Its trunk was 14 feet round when it joined the Live Oak Society around 1940 and 19.8 feet when the state measured it in 2011.
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Southern Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) · 500 years · Gulf Park campus
Hurricane Camille stripped the Friendship Oak of its leaves in 1969. Hurricane Katrina did it again in 2005. Both times the tree came back, and it is still standing on the Mississippi coast at more than 500 years old, by the university's own count.
The count comes from the University of Southern Mississippi, on whose Gulf Park campus it stands. When the oak joined the Live Oak Society as member 110, around 1940, its trunk measured 14 feet round. The state Forestry Commission measured it again in 2011 and found 19.8 feet, with a height of 59 feet and a crown 155 feet across: almost six feet of girth added in seven decades, by a tree that was already old.
Not everything held. A limb broke off in August 2017, and the tree has been braced since. In March 2025 the university finished a project around it with new sidewalks, lighting, benches and a place to stand off the street, meant, in its words, as a welcoming space for students, faculty and visitors, and the ribbon-cutting crowd toured the tree.
It is free to see, on open campus grounds rather than behind a gate, at Friendship Oak Circle on the Avenue of the Oaks in Long Beach. You will most likely come by car along the Gulf Coast.
Photo: Woodlot (CC BY-SA 3.0)