
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.
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
Ever since the 75th Anniversary of the lodge way back in 2013 Santee has created an activity patch set for all lodge events. Each year in the fall a committee takes design proposals and settles on one to carry the entire lodge year program. These patches are usually ordered all at once from the patch …Read More
For the 4th year in a row Santee Lodge 116 will have an activity patch set for the upcoming 2016 year. Paxton Roberts had his design approved at the recent fellowship with the first patch coming out in January for Winter Banquet. The set features some familiar parakeets and pulls on a lot of Santee …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
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
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
You will see the smile on my face when one of my biggest regrets is erased with the Boy Scout collection that I unbox in this video. During a move I broke one of my most treasured OA mugs. Then through a stroke of luck the replacement mug literally landed in my lap. This video …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