Park Video Tour

Current Weather Conditions on Lake Marion at Santee State Park

Santee State Park offers cabins, camping, biking, hiking, boating and fishing in the heart of one of the nation’s best-known outdoors destinations – Santee Cooper Country.

The park sits along Lake Marion, one of the two lakes (the other’s Moultrie) that gave birth to America’s inland striped bass fishery. Together, the lakes cover more than 170,000 acres and now also are known for their abundant populations of huge catfish.

The park’s rondette cabins, including 10 on piers over the lake, have been hosting outdoorsmen and families for generations. A community meeting building, with its large, screened-in grilling facility, also attracts groups.

Out in the lake across from the park is Lake Marion’s flooded cypress forest. Pontoon boat tours into the lake’s swampy headwaters are based out of the park’s marina/park store.

Sesquicentennial State Park, situated in the middle of the Sandhills region, features a beautiful 30-acre lake surrounded by trails and picnic areas.

The park’s proximity to downtown Columbia and interstate highways attracts both local residents and travelers.

Sesqui, as it’s affectionately known, is heavily used for family reunions and group campouts. It also features dog park and well-attended interpretive nature programs, as well as a dormitory, meeting facility and ropes course popular for corporate retreats and team-building.

Once a drive out to the country but now a green space in the Columbia suburbs, the park was originally built by the men of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Evidence of their craftsmanship remains today, including in the distinctive white stone blocks that mark the front gate.