Metal Detecting in Kentucky

1. The rule, in full

Kentucky – 304 KAR 1:050 (Metal detectors)

Read from the Kentucky Administrative Regulations published by the Legislative Research Commission at apps.legislature.ky.gov, 304 KAR 1:050 in full. Re-verified word for word 3 Oct 2026; both sections below are exact and the regulation has no other substantive provision.

Operative text, Section 1:

"Except as provided in Section 2 of this administrative regulation, the use of metal detectors shall be prohibited in all Kentucky state parks."

Section 2:

"Park personnel, law enforcement personnel, and utilities may use metal detectors."

Scope: RELATES TO KRS Chapter 148; statutory authority KRS 148.021 – the Department of Parks. The regulation covers "all Kentucky state parks."

Determination: state park system only. Does NOT reach municipal parks.

A rare case of a regulation devoted entirely to metal detectors, and a blanket prohibition with no hobbyist permit route at all.

Source: Kentucky LRC, apps.legislature.ky.gov 304 KAR 1:050. Checked 19 Sep 2026.

2. Cities in Kentucky that publish a rule

3 cities in Kentucky publish a rule we can quote, out of 41 checked.

Of the 41 checked, 21 had pages on the city’s own site that we found and read. For the other 20 we could not locate a municipal source, so nothing is claimed about them either way.

3. County rules

No county check has been run for Kentucky. That is not a finding that Kentucky’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; Kentucky was not one of them.

4. Cities checked - no published rule

38 cities in Kentucky were checked and have no published rule on this page. Of those, 38 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 38 were checked on 13 September 2026, in one sweep, so that date applies to every row.

5. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for Kentucky 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.