
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 nearly a decade (starting in 2013) Santee Lodge has issued themed event sets for all event patches. Because of the way patch companies produce patches this usually means the lodge orders the sets at the beginning of the year (typically 300 of each) and they are sold during the year. Ironically this has meant …Read More
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 After the National OA rescinded their outright ban on lodges making Ordeal-Brotherhood-Vigil flaps (now they just strongly discourage it) several lodges in the area are going back and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
News from Camp Coker this last fellowship- Santee 116 has a new standard issue flap. The S44 makes the third version of a design that was first issued in 2010. Designed by Steven Lastauskas with help from Todd Knaperek the first version of this design was the S32. In my frame I have it labeled …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
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 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
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