Metal Detecting in Arkansas

1. The rule, in full

Arkansas – Park Directive 3225, Recreational Metal Detecting

Read from Park Directive 3225 as supplied in writing by the Division of Arkansas State Parks, by email, 23 September 2026. The division also confirmed that no Park Operation manuals or directive series relating to metal detecting are published online.

Verified as far as verification can go, and that is the unusual part. This text exists nowhere public. There is no consolidated code, no agency page and no register that carries it, so there is nothing to check it against except the email itself – which is the authority rather than a report of it, the division being the body that issues the directive. It is reproduced below in full for that reason: a reader cannot follow a link to the source, so the source has to be on the page.

Closed on the sourcing audit, 4 Oct 2026. This entry is not outstanding and should not be re-read. A re-read would consist of reading the same email again. If the division ever publishes the directive series, the published version supersedes this and the entry is rewritten from it.

Operative text, in full:

PARK DIRECTIVE 3225
RECREATIONAL METAL DETECTING Metal detecting will be allowed only at public swim beaches located at the following parks: Crowley's Ridge, Daisy, DeGray Lake Resort, Lake Catherine, Lake Charles, Lake Dardanelle, Lake Ouachita, Village Creek, Woolly Hollow
I. The rules and procedures regarding the use of metal detectors are:
A. Metal detecting may occur from the day after Labor Day through the weekend preceding Memorial Day Sunday through Saturday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.;
B. Metal detectorists must complete a registration form (see attached copy) and have it on their person when metal detecting;
C. Digging implements and hole sizes will be regulated;
D. Items of historical and/or archeological significance will not be removed. Park staff must be contacted immediately upon the discovery of such items;
E. Uncovered "valuables" will be left at the park office until a reasonable time has passed for the original owner to claim the item (30 days per Arkansas Lost and Found laws Excludes coins in circulation). All persons using metal detectors must complete a found property report before leaving a park. If no claim is made within the thirty days, the item may be collected by the finder.
II. Persons using metal detectors shall:
1. Observe all laws, regulations, and procedures;
2. Observe the metal detectors code of ethics (see www.fmdac.com);
3. Never destroy or disturb park facilities, natural features, historical, or archeological resources;
4. Conduct themselves with thoughtfulness, courtesy, and consideration for others by not interfering with other recreational activities or allowing any emitted sound that is audible to other park users;
5. Limit digging implements to ice picks, screwdrivers, and probes not to exceed two (2") inches in width and sand scoops not to exceed six (6") inches in width and eight (8") inches in length, containing perforations no less than one-half (1/2") inch in width, to be used only on sand surfaces;
6. Limit any holes dug to six (6") inches maximum depth, refill holes immediately following searches, and restore surfaces to previous conditions;
7. Properly dispose of all found or recovered trash or litter

Scope: public swim beaches at nine named state parks. The directive's first sentence is the whole of its reach – "Metal detecting will be allowed only at public swim beaches located at the following parks" – and the nine are named in it. It does not reach municipal land, and it does not reach the rest of a state park either: a swim beach at a listed park is the only place it permits.

Status: permit required. Paragraph B requires a registration form to be completed and carried on the person while detecting.

Two things every hobby site gets wrong

1. The registration is free. The $10 figure is wrong. Asked directly, the division stated: "We do not charge for the registration or permit they fill out at the Visitor's Center." Every hobby site in circulation publishes a $10 permit for Arkansas. There is no fee.

2. It is an off-season activity, not a year-round one. Paragraph A runs the season "from the day after Labor Day through the weekend preceding Memorial Day". Detecting is closed for the whole of the summer season at these beaches. No site in circulation states this at all – they publish the hours and omit the season, which leaves a reader planning a July trip to a swim beach where the activity is not allowed.

What circulation does get right: the nine parks, and the 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. window. Both match the directive.

Our reading of paragraph A. The sentence runs the season and the weekdays together with no punctuation between them: "from the day after Labor Day through the weekend preceding Memorial Day Sunday through Saturday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m." We read it as a season (day after Labor Day to the weekend before Memorial Day), within which all seven days are open, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The alternative reading – that the season ends on a Sunday and the hours run Sunday through Saturday – produces the same practical answer for a visitor, which is why the ambiguity is recorded and not resolved.

What the rules actually require

• Tools, II.5: ice picks, screwdrivers, and probes no more than 2 inches wide; sand scoops no more than 6 inches wide and 8 inches long, with perforations no less than half an inch, "to be used only on sand surfaces".
• Holes, II.6: 6 inches maximum depth, refilled immediately, surfaces restored.
• Finds of historical or archaeological significance, I.D: not to be removed, and park staff contacted immediately on discovery.
• Valuables, I.E: left at the park office for 30 days under Arkansas lost and found law, with coins in circulation excluded; a found property report must be completed before leaving the park, by every person using a detector. If nobody claims the item within the thirty days, the finder may collect it.
• Code of ethics, II.2: the directive incorporates an outside document, the metal detectorists' code of ethics at www.fmdac.com. That is a hobby organisation's page, not a state publication, and it can change without the directive changing.

Provenance, stated because it cannot be linked

The text above is as supplied by the Division of Arkansas State Parks by email on 23 September 2026, in answer to a direct request. We have not seen a signed or dated copy of the directive itself, and the text supplied carries no effective date, revision number or attachment (paragraph B refers to an attached registration form, which is not reproduced here). Since the division says nothing in this series is online, there is no public copy to check it against and no URL to cite.

So this entry is exactly as good as the agency's email, and it says so. If the directive is revised, nothing on the public web will show it, and the only currency check available is to ask again.

Why this took three attempts, and what the failed ones established

Worth keeping, because it explains why the aggregator detail was not simply published in March:

• The Code of Arkansas Rules contains no park-use rule at all. Every chapter the Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism has in the official code – Chapter XXIII, Chapter XXIV, Chapter XXV – holds two outdoor recreation grant rules and the commission bylaws. No camping rule, no vehicle rule, no detecting rule. The absence was not a gap in the search.
• Park rules are made as directives, not regulations. Park Directive 3000 (2 February 2015): rules "will be issued as Park Directives for inclusion in the Park Operations Manual", and a summons cites "the specific Park Directive by its number". Directive 3225 is exactly that instrument.
• The site that once published directives is gone. foi.arkansas.com, which hosted Park Directive PDFs, no longer resolves, and no capture of any of its PD files exists in the Wayback index. The aggregator detail turned out to be half right, which is the worst case. Nine parks: right. Hours: right. Fee: wrong, and wrong in the direction that costs a reader money they do not owe. Season: missing entirely, and missing in the direction that sends a reader to a beach in July. Copying it in March would have published a $10 fee that does not exist and a year-round permission that does not exist, with the correct parts alongside making the whole look reliable. No statute reaches municipal land. Arkansas has no codified park-use rules, and nothing located in this pass regulates detecting on city land. Sources: Park Directive 3225, Division of Arkansas State Parks, by email 23 September 2026; the division's fee statement in the same correspondence; Code of Arkansas Rules, Title 15, Chapters XXIII to XXV, read 22 September 2026; Park Directive 3000 as published on the Arkansas State Parks rules page. Checked 27 September 2026.

2. Cities in Arkansas that publish a rule

1 city in Arkansas publishes a rule we can quote, out of 37 checked.

Of the 37 checked, 12 had pages on the city’s own site that we found and read. For the other 25 we could not locate a municipal source, so nothing is claimed about them either way.

3. County rules

County rules exist in Arkansas, and they govern county land only. 1 county rule 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 1 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.

4. Cities checked - no published rule

36 cities in Arkansas were checked and have no published rule on this page. Of those, 35 returned no rule, and 1 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 36 were checked on 13 September 2026, in one sweep, so that date applies to every row. 1 has no municipal site recorded and is shown without a link rather than dropped, because dropping them would understate what was checked.

5. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for Arkansas 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.