Santee Lodge 116 was chartered in 1938 to the Pee Dee Area Council headquartered in Florence, South Carolina. It serves eleven counties in the northeastern corner of the state stretching from rural farmland to the popular beaches along the grand strand. The heart of Santee Lodge is the council's summer camp property Camp Coker just outside of Society Hill, SC in Chesterfield County. The camp was founded in 1928 and during the life of the lodge much of its service has been centered around promoting, maintaining, and improving this jewel of the sandhills. The totem of the lodge is the Carolina Parakeet which is an extinct bird that was the only native species of parakeets in North America. Since 1955 the lodge has featured the bird on all of its memorabilia and lodge members proudly celebrate that heritage. Over its many years of service Santee Lodge has won many awards including the E. Urner Goodman Camping Award and numerous Dixie Fellowship recognitions. Although a small lodge compared to many of its neighbors Santee has stood out for the quality of its people and their passion for Scouting. In fact Rusty Riddle in his book on the history of the Dixie name Santee 116 as the #1 lodge in the section over the first fifty years of the conclave.
At the end of 2022 Muscogee Lodge 221 and Santee Lodge 116 merged as the councils had already tied the knot in August of that year. At a joint Winter Banquet held on January 7, 2023 in Sumter, SC the youth of the new lodge voted on bi-laws and elected officers for the coming year. …Read More
Santee Lodge has approved a couple OA Centennial issues which will be available in 2015. All of these designs were drawn by Vigil Honor brother Todd Knaperek of Tsali Lodge. As noted in an earlier post the lodge is doing a 5-patch set for the lodge events in 2015. At the 2014 Fall Fellowship this …Read More
What follows is a message from the Santee Lodge adviser Robin Fowler in regards to the situation with the lodge facing the provisional charter status of the Pee Dee Area Council. Brothers of Santee Lodge, Are you aware that the Pee Dee Area Council is operating on a Provisional Charter at this time? Do you …Read More
Just came back from Camp Coker and the Santee Lodge 116 Summer Fellowship. Numerous patches were issued and I thought I’d post here on CarolinaOA.com an update for the collecting community. I will use Blue Book issue #s only as a suggestion as these are what I would assign them in order of issue. S45 …Read More
Several lodges including recently Un A Li’yi, Muscogee 221 and Atta Kulla Kulla 185 have decided to use the design of their Dixie patch as a template for their event patches during that year. For collectors that has added some extra spice since not everyone collects lodge issues but there is something special about a …Read More
One of the goals of CarolinaOA.com is to share the stories that are so obscure that people in that lodge or council might not even know. I’ve got one of those for you today but first you have to go back about 15 years to the reign of terror. During the late 1990s the Pee …Read More
The Blue Book listing for Santee Lodge 116 has a curious listing that I’m sure most folks have never heard the story on. It is listed as ZS1 and the description reads, “Known examples burned in fireplace”. Well it just so happens that I stumbled across the only pictures ever taken of this patch and …Read More
In Episode 3 of Cloth Talk 2.0 Hank Birdsong and Jason Spangler turn the attention to Santee Lodge 116. For those that collect the lodge one of the more puzzling issues might be the S12 flap. It was first issued in 1995 replacing the S1o which had been the lodge’s single combination honors flap for …Read More