Friendship Oak: Five Centuries on the Gulf Coast
Near Biloxi Gulfport, Mississippi
On the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Park campus in Long Beach, a live oak tree has been standing for approximately five hundred years. The Friendship Oak, as it is known, was already a mature tree when Spanish explorers first documented the Gulf Coast shoreline. Its trunk measures nearly twenty feet in circumference, and its crown spreads about one hundred fifty-five feet across, creating a canopy large enough to shade hundreds of people at once.
Live oaks of this size and age are uncommon even along the Gulf Coast, where they were historically abundant before coastal development reduced their numbers. The Friendship Oak survived the storm surges of Hurricane Camille in nineteen sixty-nine and Hurricane Katrina in two thousand five, both of which destroyed or damaged most of the structures around it. University tradition holds that those who share the shade of the Friendship Oak will remain friends forever.
That tradition is considerably younger than the tree.
