Metal Detecting in Hawaii

1. The rule, in full

Hawaii – HRS 6E-11, and it reaches every public acre in the state

Read from the current HRS at capitol.hawaii.gov (Hawaii State Legislature).

Operative text, HRS 6E-11(a):

"It shall be a civil and administrative violation for any person to take, appropriate, excavate, injure, destroy, or alter any historic property or aviation artifact located upon the private lands of any owner thereof without the owner's written permission being first obtained. It shall be a civil and administrative violation for any person to take, appropriate, excavate, injure, destroy, or alter any historic property or aviation artifact located upon lands owned or controlled by the State or any of its political subdivisions, except as permitted by the department."

Determination: reaches all public land in Hawaii, and private land too. The full entry is in STATE-LAND-political-subdivision.md.

Hawaii's political subdivisions are its four counties – Honolulu, Hawaii, Maui and Kauai – and every acre of the state sits inside one of them. Hawaii has no incorporated municipalities. So the project's earlier decision to represent Hawaii as four county rows plus DLNR is not just a convenience; it is what the statute's own scope language maps onto. There is no municipal layer for 6E-11 to miss.

Definition, HRS 6E-2:

"'Historic property' means any building, structure, object, district, area, or site, including heiau and underwater site, that is over fifty years old and meets the criteria for being entered into the Hawaii register of historic places."

Two conditions, both required: over fifty years old and register-eligible. Age alone does not make something a historic property, and the page should quote both limbs. This is also a third genuine fifty-year state threshold, for the ARPA explainer's list alongside Connecticut and Arizona.

The penalties are the steepest found in the project, HRS 6E-11(g):

"Any person who violates this section shall be fined not more than $20,000 for each separate violation. If the violator directly or indirectly has caused the loss of, or damage to, any historic property or burial site, the violator shall be fined an additional amount … equivalent to the value of the lost or damaged historic property or burial site. Each day of continued violation … shall constitute a distinct and separate violation. … Equipment used by a violator for the taking, appropriation, excavation, injury, destruction, or alteration of any historic property or burial site, or for the transportation of the violator to or from the historic property or burial site, shall be subject to seizure and disposition by the State without compensation to its owner or owners."

Read that last sentence carefully before summarising it. It reaches the detector and the vehicle that carried the person there, with no compensation. No other state in this project forfeits transport.

HRS 6E-11.5 sets civil penalties of "not less than $500 nor more than $20,000 for each separate violation", each day separate. HRS 6E-11(j) states the civil and administrative penalties "shall be in addition to the criminal penalties provided by this chapter".

What limits it: the conduct is taking, appropriating, excavating, injuring, destroying or altering a historic property as defined – over fifty years old and register-eligible. Detecting as such is not named anywhere in chapter 6E. This is a find/site instrument, not an activity one.

SWEEP FINDING, 8 Oct 2026: the parks chapter, and it is permissive

This entry rested entirely on HRS chapter 6E, a historic-preservation statute whose penalties are the steepest in the project. It had no parks rule, and the parks rule is the one that answers a detectorist's question.

Read from HAR chapter 13-146, "Rules Regulating Activities Within the State Park System", published by the Department of Land and Natural Resources, 47,923 characters extracted. Effective 4/16/90, amended and compiled 8 June

• Authority and implementation: HRS section 184-5. Checked 8 Oct 2026.

13-146-32(h), Public property: "No person shall possess or use a mineral or metal detector, magnetometer, or other metal detecting device except on sand areas of beaches."

Possession, and a real carve-out. The prohibition reaches carrying the machine, not only switching it on, which puts Hawaii with Louisiana and the federal National Park Service rule rather than with the permit states. But the exception is clean, geographic and needs no permission: sand areas of beaches.

And the digging rule carries the same carve-out, which is what makes the permission usable:

13-146-23, Geological features: "No person shall destroy, disturb, or mutilate any geological features or dig or remove sand, earth, gravel, mineral, rock, fossil, coral, or any other substance except for digging in sand areas of beaches or as provided in section 13-146-32(f)."

So on a sand beach in a Hawaii state park both halves are permitted: you may carry and use the detector, and you may dig. Everywhere else in the park system both are prohibited. That is a rare case in this directory of two provisions lining up to give one unambiguous answer.

Two neighbours worth having:

13-146-32(f): "A person may gather or collect small quantities of pebbles or small rocks by hand for personal use, except in prohibited areas which shall be posted. … No person shall collect these objects for the purpose of sale."

13-146-11, Archaeological and historical features: "No person shall appropriate, damage, remove, excavate, disfigure, deface, or destroy objects of antiquity, prehistoric ruins and monuments; provided, however, that the board or its authorized representative may permit qualified persons or institutions to examine ruins, excavate archaeological sites and gather objects of antiquity."

Determination for this chapter: the state park system. Does NOT reach municipal parks. HRS 6E-11 still does the wider work, and the two instruments should stay apart on the page: 6E is about historic property anywhere, 13-146 is about conduct in a state park.

Why this matters to the entry as it stood. The Hawaii page led with $20,000-per-violation civil penalties and a mandatory $500 floor, and offered a reader no lawful route at all. There is one, it is specific, and it was a chapter away.

Operative text of the civil penalty, HRS 6E-11.5, "Civil penalties", read at source 8 Oct 2026:

"Except as provided in section 6E-11, any person who violates this chapter, or any rule adopted pursuant to this chapter shall be fined not less than $500 nor more than $20,000 for each separate violation. Each day of each violation constitutes a separate violation." [L 2003, c 104, pt of sec. 2; am L 2005, c 128, sec. 4; am L 2022, c 212, sec. 2]

Previously this entry described 6E-11.5 rather than quoting it. Quoted now, because two things only show in the text. It reaches a violation of the chapter or any rule adopted under it, which is wider than 6E-11's own conduct; and the floor is mandatory – "not less than $500" leaves no room for a nominal penalty. Together with the per-day multiplier, a single weekend is arithmetically a five-figure exposure.

Sources: capitol.hawaii.gov HRS 6E-2, 6E-11 and 6E-11.5. Checked 20 Sep 2026; 6E-11.5 re-read at source and quoted 8 Oct 2026.

2. Where it reaches city and county land

Hawaii – HRS 6E-11 (all public land, and private land too)

Read from the current HRS at capitol.hawaii.gov.

Scope and operative text, HRS 6E-11(a):

"It shall be a civil and administrative violation for any person to take, appropriate, excavate, injure, destroy, or alter any historic property or aviation artifact located upon the private lands of any owner thereof without the owner's written permission being first obtained. It shall be a civil and administrative violation for any person to take, appropriate, excavate, injure, destroy, or alter any historic property or aviation artifact located upon lands owned or controlled by the State or any of its political subdivisions, except as permitted by the department."

Scope: every acre in the state. Hawaii's political subdivisions are its four counties – Honolulu, Hawaii, Maui and Kauai – and there are no incorporated municipalities. All land in Hawaii is inside a county, so 6E-11 covers all public land in the state with no gap, and 6E-11(a)'s first sentence covers private land as well.

That also means the project's decision to represent Hawaii as four county rows plus DLNR matches the statute's own structure rather than merely working around the absence of cities.

Definition, HRS 6E-2 – two conditions, both required:

"'Historic property' means any building, structure, object, district, area, or site, including heiau and underwater site, that is over fifty years old and meets the criteria for being entered into the Hawaii register of historic places."

Axis: find/site. The conduct is taking, appropriating, excavating, injuring, destroying or altering. Detecting appears nowhere in chapter 6E.

The penalties are the most severe in this file, HRS 6E-11(g):

"Any person who violates this section shall be fined not more than $20,000 for each separate violation … an additional amount … equivalent to the value of the lost or damaged historic property or burial site. Each day of continued violation … shall constitute a distinct and separate violation … Equipment used by a violator for the taking, appropriation, excavation, injury, destruction, or alteration of any historic property or burial site, or for the transportation of the violator to or from the historic property or burial site, shall be subject to seizure and disposition by the State without compensation to its owner or owners."

Hawaii is the only state found that forfeits the vehicle, not just the find and the tool. HRS 6E-11.5 adds civil penalties of $500 to $20,000 per separate violation, and 6E-11(j) confirms these run "in addition to the criminal penalties provided by this chapter".

Directory entry should read: in Hawaii it is a civil violation to take, excavate, injure or alter any historic property – over fifty years old and register-eligible – on any land owned or controlled by the State or any of the four counties, except as permitted by DLNR. Fines run to $20,000 per violation per day, finds are forfeited, and equipment including the vehicle used to get there can be seized without compensation. It should NOT read that metal detecting is prohibited in Hawaii; the chapter does not mention it.

3. Cities in Hawaii that publish a rule

No city in Hawaii publishes a metal detecting rule we can quote. We checked the one city in our list for this state and read pages on its own site. It sets out no rule.

This is a finding, not a queue. It is also not proof that no rule exists: a city that posts its rules on a noticeboard, or in a document our searches do not surface, looks exactly the same from here.

4. County rules

No county check has been run for Hawaii. That is not a finding that Hawaii’s counties publish no rules. It means the question was never asked here, and this directory does not assert an answer it has not looked for. The county sweep covered 21 states; Hawaii was not one of them.

5. Cities checked - no published rule

1 city in Hawaii were checked and has no published rule on this page. Of those, 1 returned no rule, and 0 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 1 were checked on 13 September 2026, in one sweep, so that date applies to every row.

6. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for Hawaii 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.