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116 Santee
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.
News
Santee Centennial Set Rolls Out For the OA Birthday
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Order of the Arrow Santee 116 is issuing an activity patch set. Although the first event in the set happened in January the patches were not ready. However, they were sold at the recent Spring Fellowship and the lodge store adviser was kind enough to bring out the …Read More
Santee Lodge 116 Brings Back The O-B-V
At the 2017 Fall Fellowship old blue is back at Camp Coker. After the National OA rescinded their outright ban on lodges making Ordeal-Brotherhood-Vigil flaps (now they just strongly discourage it) several lodges in the area are going back and reissuing sets. Catawba Lodge 459 was probably the first in the area to do this …Read More
Santee 116 Centennial Issues Are Out!
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
Muscogee Lodge 116 First Patch Designs
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 2022 Activity Patch Set
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
Memorabilia History
Santee Lodge 116 First Issue Patch – The Arrowhead
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
The Desolation of Head – Santee Issues You’ve Never Seen or Heard Of
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
Santee 116 Dixie Fellowship Host Flap Broke the Mold
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