
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.
For going on a decade now the lodge has issued an activity patch set. In 2022 the designer, William Duffell, went with a “teardrop” design which throws back to patches that have been issued as far back as the 1974 Fall Fellowship. There are 5 patches in the set. This is one less than all …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
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
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
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
In August of 2011 at the LLDC the executive committee approved a new “Trader Flap” for the lodge. The vote came at the direction of the scout executive in order to have a Santee flap available for open sale in the Florence office. Several designs were drawn up around tables in the dining hall. However, …Read More
If you go back and take a look at lodge host items issued for either the Cardinal Conclave or Dixie Fellowship I think 1983 marks the beginning of a new era. Up until that point I’m not aware of any patches being issued by host lodges unless you want to count some of the early …Read More
The first lodge emblem did not come out until 1955. This patch is in the shape of an arrowhead and is commonly called the “Arrowhead”. Prior to this time members only had their white sashes and dangle pin to distinguish them as brothers in the Order of the Arrow. The “Arrowhead” was ordered to have …Read More