
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.
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
For the OA Centennial Santee is going to have a fellowship set for the third year in a row. In a typical year the lodge has five events that patches are issued for. So for 2015 the five patches are going to fit together and make an approximate 15″ wide set. The idea for this …Read More
To celebrate the lodge’s 75th anniversary Santee 116 issued a unique activity patch set that is tied together with a star shaped jacket patch. This center patch featured the diamond anniversary logo and the names of the 5 OA chapters in the lodge. The initials CC represent the home camp – Camp Coker. The events …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
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
Download the free PDF: A Patch Collectors Guide To Santee Lodge 116 (35 pages in color) In the post Blue Book era of OA collecting the trend I see in the hobby is for dedicated lodge historians to publish their own lodge memorabilia books. I first published this book in 2008 and followed it …Read More
This was shared by Jason Shull and it was honestly a surprise to everyone he told about it. As some of you may know there were plans to hold the a National OA Meeting in 1942 and apparently one of the places that was strongly considered as the host site was Cheraw State Park just …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