On May 20, 2012 National OA Committee Chairman Ray Capp and Steve Bradley presented Long Beach Area Council with the first new charter in 42 years as 38 youth and 15 adults were inducted into the OA.  The youth membership elected officers and selected Puvunga as their lodge name. It translates to "the gathering place". The lodge totem is a porpoise.

Prior to that weekend, the last new lodge to form in a council that had never had OA was Achsin Lodge of Chamorro Council serving Guam, which was formed in 1970.   The last lodge to form in the continental US in a council without a merger was Osceola Lodge chartered to Southwest Florida Council located in Fort Myers, FL in 1968.  Long Beach Area Council retained their other non-OA fraternal society, the Tribe of Tahquitz.

The name Puvunga means “The Gathering Place”: a village located at the site of Cal State University, Long Beach, considered by some Tongva to be the site of creation, and once held a sacred spring.  The Council secured approval from the Tongva tribe to use this name if selected by the youth of the new lodge.

With the formation of Puvunga Lodge only one council in the nation, Pony Express Council, St. Joseph, Missouri that runs the non-OA society, Tribe of Mic-O-Say, remains without OA.