Metal Detecting in New Jersey

1. The rule, in full

New Jersey – N.J.A.C. 7:2-2.16 (State Park Service Code)

Read from the Department of Environmental Protection's published PDF of N.J.A.C. 7:2, the State Park Service Code, parsed locally, together with N.J.A.C. 7:25 in full and the 18 February 2014 rule adoption. Checked 3 Oct

• That PDF is a courtesy copy and this entry explains below why no official version exists to read instead.
  Operative text, N.J.A.C. 7:2-2.16:

"A person shall not use metal detectors or similar devices without a permit issued by Superintendent or designee. The permit may limit the location, hours, and days of use. A permit will not be issued for use in areas of significant historical or other value, or where such use would be incompatible with protection of the resource and/or interfere with public use of the facility."

Scope, the definition at N.J.A.C. 7:2-1.7, which is the part that matters:

"'State Park' means all State owned or leased lands, waters and facilities administered by the State Park Service including but not limited to, parks, forests, recreational areas, natural areas, marinas, golf courses, botanical gardens, and historic sites, but not including wildlife management areas or reservoir lands."

Determination: all land the State Park Service administers, which expressly includes state forests. Does NOT reach municipal parks, and expressly does NOT reach wildlife management areas or reservoir lands.

New Jersey is one of only four states in this project where one instrument covers the park land and the forest land together, and it is the only one that achieves it by naming the classes in a definition rather than by naming the department. The previous version of this entry gave the scope as land "under the jurisdiction of the State Park Service" and never quoted the definition, which both understated the reach and hid the exclusion.

A permit regime rather than a ban, but a discretionary one – the superintendent may refuse on resource or public-use grounds, so this is permit_required with no guarantee of issue.

Wildlife management areas: the agency prohibits what its code does not. The 7:2 definition puts WMAs outside this chapter, so the Division of Fish and Wildlife's own rules would have to carry any detector provision. N.J.A.C. 7:25 was read in full – 1,168,684 characters – and contains no occurrence of the word "detect". DEP's WMA regulations page nonetheless states that metal detecting is prohibited on wildlife management areas. That is the agency's policy with no regulation behind it. It is quoted here as policy, and a reader should expect it to be enforced on the ground whatever the Code omits.

Why this entry cites a courtesy copy, under the rule 11 exception

There is no official version of the New Jersey Administrative Code published online, at any price. This is variant B of the rule 11 exception, and the four conditions are met in the publisher's own words rather than by our failure to find something:

• The official publication exists and is unavailable online. The Office of Administrative Law says of the freely accessible LexisNexis Code: "Please note that the online version of the Code is not the official Code." DEP's own PDF states on every page: "THIS IS A COURTESY COPY OF THIS RULE. ALL OF THE DEPARTMENT'S RULES ARE COMPILED IN TITLE 7 OF THE NEW JERSEY ADMINISTRATIVE CODE." Both are the publisher conceding the gap.
• The gap is established, not assumed. Every readable form of this rule is a reproduction that disclaims official status, including DEP's rule adoptions: the 18 February 2014 adoption document is itself headed "THIS IS A COURTESY COPY OF THIS RULE ADOPTION. THE OFFICIAL VERSION WILL BE PUBLISHED IN THE FEBRUARY 18, 2014 NEW JERSEY REGISTER."
• Later amendment is ruled out. DEP's chapter PDF records "Date Last Amended: February 18, 2014", and that adoption's own list of amended sections – 7:2-1.7, 2.1, 2.5, 2.8, 2.9, 2.11, 2.12, 2.17, 2.20, 2.22, 2.25, 3.2, 3.4, 3.5, 8.1, 8.9, 8.10, 9.7, 13.2, 13.3, 13.7, 16.2 and 17.1 through 17.4, read from the adoption document – does not include 2.16. So the text of 2.16 predates February 2014 and was not changed by the last amendment to the chapter.
• The official source that would settle it is the printed New Jersey Register and the official New Jersey Administrative Code. Read those before relying on this quotation anywhere it has to be relied upon – the same caveat this project carries on Vermont's statutes. What this does not mean: the text is unverified guesswork. It is the Department's own reproduction of its own rule, and the quotation above is character-for-character what that document says. What is missing is an official publication to check it against, and that is New Jersey's doing rather than ours. Sources: dep.nj.gov njac7_2.pdf (State Park Service Code courtesy copy, chapter last amended 18 Feb 2014) and njac7-25.pdf (Division of Fish and Wildlife rules, read in full); dep.nj.gov adopt_20140218a.pdf (adoption courtesy copy, retrieved through a premium proxy because the host serves an Incapsula challenge to direct requests); nj.gov/oal access statement. Checked 3 Oct 2026.

2. Cities in New Jersey that publish a rule

1 city in New Jersey publishes a rule we can quote, out of 111 checked.

Of the 111 checked, 56 had pages on the city’s own site that we found and read. For the other 55 we could not locate a municipal source, so nothing is claimed about them either way.

3. County rules

County rules exist in New Jersey, and they govern county land only. 3 county rules surfaced while checking cities in this state. Each was read and then set aside, because a county park rule does not answer whether a city park allows detecting, and it is not the state rule either. They are listed because their existence is the useful fact: if you are in a county park, a separate rule probably applies to you.

0 of these 3 name their county in the text that was read; the rest name only “county park” or “county parks”, so the source is given instead of a county name. A county is never inferred from a web address.

River Edge: a rule was found and could not be attributed. The document came from a county historical society rather than from the county, so there was no way to say the county had adopted it. That is a different failure from the rows above – those were set aside for scope, having been correctly attributed. This one is not evidence that a county rule exists.

4. Cities checked - no published rule

110 cities in New Jersey were checked and have no published rule on this page. Of those, 106 returned no rule, and 4 did return something that has not been published – mostly rules that turned out to govern county land, which are in the county section above. A city here is not a city where detecting is allowed. It is a city whose own published material did not answer the question.

All 110 were checked on 13 September 2026, in one sweep, so that date applies to every row.

5. Clubs in New Jersey

8 in our directory for New Jersey - 6 verified against their own website or group, 2 we could not verify. Verified means we opened the link and read it. All New Jersey clubs on the club directory, with meeting nights and contacts where we have them.

• Deep Search Metal Detecting Club - deepsearchmdc.com · Deal · verified
• East Coast Research and Discovery Association (E.C.R.D.A.) - Facebook page · verified
• Metal Detecting NEW JERSEY - Facebook group · verified
• Mid Jersey Research & Recovery Club - midjersey.com · verified
• South Jersey Metal Detecting Club - Facebook group · Haddon Heights · verified
• South Jersey Metal Detecting Club and News - Facebook page · verified
• East Coast Research and Discovery Assoc - Pompton Plains · could not verify
• Pirates of the Pines Treasure Hunters - could not verify

6. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for New Jersey state land, and for city and county land where the state rule reaches it. Several other kinds of ground are not covered here, and naming them is more honest than letting a reader assume the page is complete.

Tribal land. This directory does not cover it, and will not.

There are 574 federally recognised tribal nations. Each is a sovereign jurisdiction with its own law, its own permitting, its own enforcement and its own cultural-resource provisions, and none of them is answered by a state's code or by any federal rule quoted on these pages. A one-line instruction to "get tribal permission" would be worse than this paragraph, because it implies one process and one authority where there are 574. If you are on or near tribal land, the governing law is that nation's, and the place to ask is that nation's own offices. Nothing on this page applies there.

BLM land is covered, partly, in its own place. The Bureau of Land Management holds about 245 million acres and the federal rule names metal detectors and permits them, which is the opposite of the national park rule. See BLM land: the detector is named, and permitted. That page covers the base regulation; it does not yet cover the supplementary rules individual BLM State Directors issue for particular field offices.

Named and not examined. These are recorded so their absence is visible rather than silent. No claim is made about any of them:

• Military withdrawn land, including ranges and training areas.
• Bureau of Reclamation land, which surrounds a great many reservoirs.
• Water district and irrigation district land.
• Wilderness, Wilderness Study Areas and National Conservation Areas, which carry designations of their own. And one general point about signs. The commonest piece of reasoning in this subject is "there was no sign, so it was allowed." Arizona's State Land Department answers it in writing, in condition 2 of its own Recreational Permit terms:

"You will comply with all laws, rules, regulations and ordinances. Posting is not required for these provisions to be enforceable."

That is Arizona's sentence about Arizona's provisions and this directory does not present it as the law of any other state. But the proposition it states is the one to carry: nothing read for this project makes a published rule's enforceability depend on a sign at the boundary. Where posting does matter, a specific provision says so, and that provision is quoted on the page where it occurs.