
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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