Friendship Oak

[1] Friendship Oak dates from the year 1487, and was a sapling at the time that Christopher Columbus first visited the New World.

[2] In the 1920s, poet Vachel Lindsay taught at Gulf Park College for Women and read poetry to students beneath the branches of Friendship Oak.

In 1950, the oak was featured in a Life magazine article about Gulf Park College, where students attended classes under the tree.

[8][9] Most of the wedding ceremonies have been celebrated by former students of Gulf Park College or the University of Southern Mississippi.

Through the centuries, hurricane winds have defoliated the Friendship Oak and subjected its roots to seawater pushed inland from the Gulf of Mexico as storm surges.

Friendship Oak on the Gulf Park campus of the University of Southern Mississippi, Long Beach, Mississippi, October 2011
Friendship Oak has massive, downward sweeping limbs that are typical of Quercus virginiana
Friendship Oak in December 2005, approximately 3 months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast