Metal Detecting in Illinois

1. The rule, in full

Illinois – 17 Ill. Adm. Code 110.120(c)

Read from the Illinois Administrative Code as published by the Illinois General Assembly (ilga.gov, Joint Committee on Administrative Rules), Part 110 entire. Section 110.120 source note: "Amended at 45 Ill. Reg. 12553, effective September 24, 2021". Checked 21 Sep 2026.

Operative text, 110.120:

"It shall be unlawful, on Department-owned, -leased or -managed property or facilities: … c) For any person to operate a non-handheld metal or mineral detection device. Persons must obtain a permit from the Department through the Chief of Lands, in advance, indicating the location where handheld devices will be used. Further, only a small pen knife, icepick or screwdriver shall be used by the permittee to recover any find in the area designated. After completing detection activity, the permittee must return the work area to its original state. No shovels, picks or entrenching devices of any size shall be used."

Scope is carried in the section's own opening words: "on Department-owned, -leased or -managed property or facilities". Part 110 is titled "Public Use of State Parks and Other Properties of the Department of Natural Resources".

Determination: IDNR land only. The rule does NOT reach municipal parks.

The subsection does two things and they must stay distinct: a non-handheld device is barred outright, and a handheld device needs an advance permit from the Chief of Lands naming the location. Recovery is limited to "a small pen knife, icepick or screwdriver".

Artifacts on the same land, 110.70(c):

"For any person to collect or take artifacts and/or mutilate, destroy, deface or excavate any archaeological site, except as provided by permit issued according to 17 Ill. Adm. Code 370."

The Illinois result is not "state land only". The Archaeological and Paleontological Resources Protection Act defines "public land" to include land owned by "a municipality or a unit of local government". See the political-subdivision entry. The statute pass recorded Illinois as agency land only; that was an agency scope statement, and it answered a different question.

The penalty, which the articles guessed and which is far harsher than they guessed

The statute behind the political-subdivision entry carries the penalty, and this page did not previously state it.

20 ILCS 3435/5, "Penalties": "Any violation of Section 3 not involving the disturbance of human remains is a Class A misdemeanor and the violator shall also be subject to a fine not in excess of $5,000; any subsequent violation is a Class 4 felony. Any violation of Section 3 involving disturbance of human remains is a Class 4 felony. Each disturbance of an archaeological site or a paleontological site shall constitute a single offense. Persons convicted of a violation of Section 3 shall also be ordered to pay restitution. Such restitution is to be assessed by the circuit court."

Four features of Sec. 5 that change what a reader should do. The fine ceiling is $5,000, not a figure in the low hundreds. A second offence is a felony, which is the steepest escalation on this page. Disturbing human remains is a felony on the first offence. And restitution is mandatory on conviction – "shall also be ordered" – assessed by the circuit court on top of the fine.

Why this matters more in Illinois than in most states. Sec. 5 attaches to a violation of Sec. 3, and Sec. 3 makes it unlawful to "knowingly explore, excavate, possess, or collect" a protected resource without a Department permit. As the political-subdivision entry sets out, the Act's "public land" definition takes in land owned by "a municipality or a unit of local government". So the Class A misdemeanour, the $5,000 ceiling, the felony on repeat and the mandatory restitution are all live in a city park, not only on IDNR land.

The Act also provides for confiscation and forfeiture of property used in a violation, with a right to have a court or jury determine the illegality of the use and a right of appeal, and it states that forfeiture "shall not preclude or mitigate against prosecution and assessment of penalties otherwise provided in this Act". And it authorises a reward of up to $2,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a person who violates Section 3.

Deepened 18 Oct 2026 from the archived copy of 20 ILCS 3435 read from ilga.gov, the Illinois General Assembly's own publication of the Compiled Statutes; Sec. 5 is quoted from that document.

Sources: ilga.gov JCAR EntirePart 01700110. Checked 21 Sep 2026.

2. Where it reaches city and county land

Illinois – 20 ILCS 3435 (Archaeological and Paleontological Resources Protection Act)

Read from the Illinois Compiled Statutes published by the Illinois General Assembly (ilga.gov), 20 ILCS 3435, source notes to P.A. 103-446 (eff. 4 Aug 2023) and P.A. 103-616 (eff. 1 Jul 2024). Checked 21 Sep 2026.

Operative text, Sec. 3:

"(a) It is unlawful for any person, either by himself or through an agent, to knowingly explore, excavate, possess, or collect any of the archaeological or paleontological resources protected by this Act, unless such person obtains a permit issued by the Department of Natural Resources.
(b) It is unlawful for any person, either by himself or through an agent, to knowingly disturb any archaeological or paleontological resource protected under this Act."

Scope: reaches municipal land. Sec. .02:

"'Public land' means any land owned, but does not include land leased as lessee, by the State of Illinois or its agencies, a State university created by statute, a municipality or a unit of local government."

"'Archaeological resource' means any significant material remains or localities of past human life or activities on public land, including but not limited to artifacts, historic and prehistoric human remains, mounds, earthworks, shipwrecks, forts, village sites or mines."

Sec. 1 reserves to the state "the exclusive right and privilege of regulating, exploring, excavating or surveying, through the Department of Natural Resources, all archaeological and paleontological resources found upon or within any public lands."

Axis: borderline, and honestly so. Two words carry the reach and neither is defined anywhere in the Act.

• "Explore", Sec. 3(a). "Excavate", "possess" and "collect" are plainly find/site verbs. "Explore" is not, and it bites before anything is taken: exploring for a protected resource is itself unlawful without a permit. Read that way it is an activity term, closer to the Massachusetts and Wisconsin formula. The Act does not say.
• "Significant", in the definition of "archaeological resource". It sets no age, no value and no test, and nothing in the Act supplies one. Illinois has no equivalent of Oregon's 75-year floor. Do not resolve either by inference. The Illinois entry quotes "knowingly explore, excavate, possess, or collect" and "any significant material remains", and says in terms that neither "explore" nor "significant" is defined and that the reach of each is untested. A reader must be able to see that the statute leaves the question open, rather than read our guess at it. This is the same treatment as Oklahoma's "exploration". "Disturb" is defined broadly: it "includes defacing, mutilating, injuring, exposing, removing, destroying, desecrating or molesting in any way." Penalty, Sec. 5:

"Any violation of Section 3 not involving the disturbance of human remains is a Class A misdemeanor and the violator shall also be subject to a fine not in excess of $5,000; any subsequent violation is a Class 4 felony. Any violation of Section 3 involving disturbance of human remains is a Class 4 felony."

Restitution is also mandatory. Sec. 7: "All materials and associated records remain the property of the State".

Permits are issued under DNR regulations after consultation with the land manager, Sec. 6. Those regulations were not read for this entry, so the page does not say who can obtain one.

Axis 1: borderline – see above; the entry says so rather than choosing. Axis 2: all of it – every acre a municipality or unit of local government owns.

Directory entry should read: in Illinois, it is unlawful without a DNR permit to knowingly explore for, excavate, possess, collect or disturb significant archaeological remains on land owned by the state, a state university, or any city, village, county or other unit of local government – and the Act defines neither "explore" nor "significant", so how far the prohibition reaches an ordinary search has not been settled. It should NOT read that metal detecting is prohibited in Illinois city parks, and it should NOT state a threshold the Act does not contain.

3. Cities in Illinois that publish a rule

No city in Illinois publishes a metal detecting rule we can quote. Of the 231 cities we checked, 110 had pages on the city’s own site that we found and read, and none of those sets out a rule. For the remaining 121 we could not locate a municipal source, so nothing is claimed about them either way.

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 Illinois. That is not a finding that Illinois’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; Illinois was not one of them.

5. Cities checked - no published rule

222 cities in Illinois were checked and have no published rule on this page. Of those, 222 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 222 were checked on 13 September 2026, in one sweep, so that date applies to every row. 13 have no municipal site recorded and are shown without a link rather than dropped, because dropping them would understate what was checked.

6. Clubs in Illinois

23 in our directory for Illinois - 11 verified against their own website or group, 12 we could not verify. Verified means we opened the link and read it. All Illinois clubs on the club directory, with meeting nights and contacts where we have them.

• East Central Indiana Treasure Hunters - verified
• Galena Treasure Hunters - Facebook group · verified
• Illinois Gold Seekers - Facebook group · verified
• Illinois Metal Detecting Association - imda.club · verified
• Illinois Valley Historical Research & Recovery Association - ivhrra.com/privacy-policy · verified
• McLean County Metal Detecting Club - Facebook group · verified
• Metal Detecting (Lake County Illinois) - Facebook page · verified
• Sage City Relic Hunters - sagecityhunters.00server.com · Champaign · verified
• The Peoria Area Treasure Hunters Metal Detecting Club (PATH) - Facebook group · Peoria · verified
• Tri-State Metal Detecting Club-Illinois - Facebook group · verified
• Will County Historical Research and Recovery Assoc - wchrra.org · Beecher · verified
• Chicago, IL – Hidden History League (School club) - Chicago · could not verify
• Chicagoland Searchers - Chicago · could not verify
• Great American Treasure Hunting Association - Lynn Center · could not verify
• Great Lakes Historical Recovery - Crystal Lake · could not verify
• Illinois Metal Detecting Association (IMDA) (Statewide) - could not verify
• Lake County Historical Research & Recovery - Vernon Hills · could not verify
• Land of Lincoln Metal Detectors Club - Springfield · could not verify
• McLean County Nuggettiers Metal Detecting Club - Bloomington · could not verify
• Midwest Historical Research Society - Chicago · could not verify
• Peoria Area Treasure Hunters - Princeville · could not verify
• Southern Illinois Treasure Hunters - Carbondale · could not verify
• Springfield/Woodbridge Detectors Club - Springfield/Woodbridge · could not verify

7. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for Illinois 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.