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The Santee River is a river in South Carolina in the United States, and is long. The Santee and its tributaries provide the principal drainage for the coastal areas of southeastern South Carolina and navigation for the central coastal plain of South Carolina, emptying into the Atlantic Ocean about halfway between Myrtle Beach and Charleston near the community of McClellanville. The farthest headwaters are away on the Catawba River in North Carolina. Besides the Catawba, other principal rivers of the Santee Drainage basin include the Congaree River, Broad, Linville River, Saluda River and the Wateree River. The watershed drains a large portion of the Piedmont regions of South and North Carolina. The Santee River is the second largest river on the eastern coast of the United States, second only to the Susquehanna River in drainage area and flow. Much of the upper river is impounded by the expansive, horn-shaped Lake Marion reservoir, formed by the -long Santee Dam. The dam was built during the Great Depression of the 1930s as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project to provide a major source of hydroelectricity for the state of South Carolina.
Downstream from the reservoir it flows east, then southeast, forming the northeast boundary of Francis Marion National Forest. Approximately from its mouth it distributary into two channels, named the North Santee and South Santee, that flow parallel and separated by approximately , creating Cedar Island. The two channels reach the ocean at Santee Point, approximately south of Georgetown, and not far from the outlet of the Pee Dee River.
After suffering a defeat by the English and their allies during the Yamasee War in 1715–1716, the Santee were relocated. Many were shipped as slavery to the West Indies, opening the river for British settlement as part of the Province of Carolina.
During the late 18th century, the upper river was the site of the homestead of Francis Marion, a patriot of the American Revolutionary War. The original site of his homestead has been flooded by the reservoir Lake Marion, which is named in his honor.
Construction of the -long Santee Canal, linking the river to the Cooper, was begun in 1793 and finished in 1800. It allowed direct water transportation between the upcountry of central South Carolina and the port city Charleston, at the outlet of the Cooper River. The canal operated for 50 years before being made obsolete by the introduction of railroads.
During the Great Depression, the state of South Carolina created the power utility Santee Cooper. The main source of electric power for the utility was a hydroelectric system inland from Charleston, built by the federal government during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Starting in 1939, the Santee River was dammed, forming lakes Marion and Moultrie, and diverting the river's flow into the Cooper River through a hydroelectric plant at Pinopolis. The WPA project was completed in 1941.
Though the project succeeded in providing cheap electricity to modernize rural South Carolina, unintended consequences were changes to the character of both the Cooper and Santee rivers below the project. Deprived of most its water flow, the Santee River became more saline and its ecosystem gradually changed below the dam. The Cooper River received more of the freshwater and sediment loads that used to flow into the Santee and carried them downstream. This has resulted in greatly increasing the dredging costs to keep Charleston Harbor operating as a port. During the 1980s, the Army Corps of Engineers built a "rediversion" canal to send most of the water back into the Santee, partially mitigating this problem.
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