Live Oak County Texas map
28.35° N · 98.13° W · County seat: George West · 1,079 sq mi
Three rivers meet in this county — the Frio, the Atascosa and the Nueces — and the town at the junction is called Three Rivers because of it. Upstream of the junction the Frio is dammed into Choke Canyon Reservoir, which supplies water to Corpus Christi 60 miles away, and I-37 crosses the whole county on its way between there and San Antonio.
I-37 runs northwest to southeast across the map. Choke Canyon Reservoir is the water body on the western side; the Nueces River leaves the county toward Lake Corpus Christi in the southeast.
Where Live Oak County is
The county was created in 1856 from Nueces and San Patricio counties and named for the live oak groves along its creek bottoms — by tradition, for the particular tree under which the petition for a new county was signed. It has seven neighbours: Karnes County northeast, Bee County east, San Patricio County southeast, Jim Wells County south, Duval County southwest, McMullen County west and Atascosa County northwest.
It sits almost exactly halfway along I-37: San Antonio is about 77 miles northwest and Corpus Christi 59 miles southeast. Victoria is 75 miles northeast by US-59.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| George West (county seat) | City | 2,164 |
| Three Rivers | City | 1,473 |
Oakville, the original county seat on the old stage route, and Whitsett, Dinero, Clegg and Calliham are unincorporated. George West took the seat in 1919; the town had been laid out six years earlier by rancher George Washington West, who paid to bring the railroad through and put up the courthouse. A mounted longhorn steer named Geronimo, one of West's, is still displayed in a glass case in the middle of town.
Roads
- I-37 – crosses the county diagonally, with exits at Three Rivers, Whitsett and the US-59 junction; it is the only interstate between San Antonio and Corpus Christi.
- US-281 – runs north–south through George West, north to Three Rivers and Pleasanton, south to Alice and the Rio Grande Valley. It shares the freeway with I-37 for a stretch.
- US-59 – southeast from George West to Beeville and Victoria, part of the future I-69W corridor.
- SH-72 – west from Three Rivers to Tilden and Kenedy on the east.
- FM-534, FM-99 and FM-3024 – the routes to Choke Canyon, Dinero and the lake country.
Choke Canyon Reservoir
Choke Canyon Dam impounds the Frio River just west of Three Rivers. The reservoir was completed in 1982 and is owned by the City of Corpus Christi, which operates it with Lake Corpus Christi downstream as a linked supply for the Coastal Bend. At conservation level it covers roughly 26,000 acres, spilling west across the line into McMullen County, and its level swings hard in drought.
Choke Canyon State Park has two separate units on the lake. The South Shore Unit is just off SH-72 near Three Rivers; the Calliham Unit, the larger one, is about 12 miles west on SH-72 and has camping, a swimming lake and a group facility built around the abandoned townsite of Calliham. Alligators live in the reservoir at close to the western limit of their Texas range, and the shoreline brush is good for javelina, deer and birds that are hard to find farther north.
Downstream, the Frio and Atascosa join the Nueces at Three Rivers, and the combined river runs southeast into Lake Corpus Christi. Lake Corpus Christi State Park is on the upper end of that reservoir near Mathis, at the county's southeastern corner.
Oil, gas and the brush
Live Oak County lies over the Eagle Ford shale, and the drilling boom that began around 2009 filled the I-37 motels and truck stops and left behind a network of tank batteries and gathering lines on the ranch roads. There is a refinery at Three Rivers, and a nuclear fuel processing operation has operated in the county as well. Between the well pads the land is South Texas brush country — mesquite, huisache and prickly pear over sandy loam — run as cattle range and hunting lease, which is what most of the county has always been.