Live Oak, Florida

Live Oak is a city and the county seat of Suwannee County, Florida, United States. The city is midway between Tallahassee and Jacksonville. As of the 2020 census, Live Oak had a population of 6,735.

U.S. Highway 90, U.S. Highway 129 and Interstate 10 are major highways running through Live Oak.

Freight service is provided by the Florida Gulf & Atlantic Railroad, which acquired most of the former CSX main line from Pensacola to Jacksonville on June 1, 2019.

It is served by the Suwannee County Airport as well as many private airparks scattered throughout the county.

There is also a community named Live Oak in Washington County, Florida.

Built along the Pensacola & Georgia Railroad in or prior to 1861, Live Oak was named for a southern live oak tree under which railroad workers rested and ate lunch.^{[citation needed]} When a railroad depot was built nearby, the small community that sprang up around it was called “Live Oak Station” (first mentioned in records in 1861). The tree was at the site of the present-day Pepe's Mexican Grocery on U.S. 90.

During the Civil War, the Pensacola & Georgia Railroad served as a vital route for parts of North Florida. Defensive earthworks were built where it crossed the Suwannee River west of Live Oak, to deter Union attacks. These earthworks still exist as part of the Suwannee River State Park, one of Florida's first State parks.

To ease supply problems to other parts of the Confederacy, the Confederate government decided to create a north–south railroad link into Georgia through Live Oak. The railroad junction was completed in early 1865. It was too late to help the Confederacy, but it opened up the interior of the county to settlement in the postwar period.^{[citation needed]}