The Dale Masonic Lodge organized at Dale Town (later Prairie Bluff) in 1827. When the town declined in the 1840s, members voted to move the lodge to Camden. The Dale Masonic Lodge building that’s shown was built circa 1848. Union troops camped in this building while passing through Camden in 1865. In 1936, the building was photographed and recorded in the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). In 1939, it was recorded by the pioneer female photographer, Frances Benjamin Johnston, in the Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South (CSAS).