Metal Detecting in Maine

1. The rule, in full

Maine – 27 M.R.S. chapter 13

The parks rules, and a two-tier answer

Read from 01-670 Chapter 1, "Rules for State Parks and Historic Sites", Bureau of Parks and Lands, Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, as published by the Maine Secretary of State, 23,863 characters. Statutory authority 12 M.R.S.A. 606, made under Title 12 section 1803(6). Effective 14 March 1975 (filed 8-14-78); electronic conversion 4 May 1996. Checked 8 Oct 2026.

Item 4: "Use of metal detectors at historic sites is prohibited. Metal detectors are allowed in other areas only by written permit obtained at the park."

Two tiers in one sentence, and the second half is the usable one: a written permit obtained at the park, not from a central office and not from an archaeologist. That is among the most accessible routes in the directory.

But item 1 closes what item 4 opens, and the page must carry both:

Item 1: "The use of all State Parks and Historic Sites, as defined in the Title 12 MRSA section 1801 (5), (7), shall be limited to the purposes for which they are being preserved and to activities determined by the Bureau to be compatible with the intended use of the facility. … The removal, molesting, injury or damage of anything natural, physical, prehistorical, or historical within these areas is strictly prohibited except as outlined in section 21 regarding hunting, trapping and firearms."

So Maine is the sweep-not-take distinction in its sharpest form. A written permit lets you use the detector. Item 1 still prohibits removing "anything natural, physical, prehistorical, or historical", with no permit route attached and only a hunting and firearms exception. Read together: the permit authorises the search, not the recovery.

The two defined terms, read at source. 12 M.R.S. 1801 was read directly rather than through the rule that cites it:

1801(5), "Historic site": "any area of land owned, leased or otherwise controlled by the State, with or without buildings, improvements or other structures, that has been classified by the director for public use wholly or primarily because of its historical, archaeological or scientific interest or value."

1801(7), "Park": "any area of land or an interest in land, with or without improvements, that is acquired by or under the control of the State, managed primarily for public recreation or conservation purposes and classified by the director as a park…"

Both turn on classification by the director, so the class is a list the Bureau keeps rather than a description a reader can apply to the ground in front of them. 1801 also defines three further classes the parks rule does not mention: nonreserved public lands at 1801(6), ecological reserves at 1801(4-A), and public reserved lands elsewhere in the chapter.

And the Bureau has published no use rule for those classes. 01-670 has four chapters. Chapter 1 is the State Parks and Historic Sites rule quoted above; chapter 3 is the Maine State Aids to Navigation System and chapter 4 is Rules and Regulations Governing Boating Facilities, and neither mentions a metal detector, an artifact or excavation. Chapters 2 and 5 do not exist. So on Maine's public reserved and nonreserved public lands there is no detector rule and no removal rule in the Bureau's published chapters at all – a checked result rather than an untested gap.

Not read: the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife rules, which govern Maine's wildlife management areas under a different agency and chapter number. Nothing is stated here about that class.

Determination: the parks rule covers State Parks and Historic Sites as classified by the director under 12 M.R.S. 1801(5) and (7). Does NOT reach municipal parks, and does NOT reach public reserved lands, nonreserved public lands or ecological reserves, for which the Bureau publishes no use rule.

Read from the consolidated chapter PDF at legislature.maine.gov (Office of the Revisor of Statutes), parsed locally.

Operative text, 27 M.R.S. 375(1):

"Unlawful excavation" means unauthorized excavation at a protected site, unless: A. A demonstrable emergency situation existed relating to the survival of the protected site; and B. An excavation permit is immediately applied for in accordance with section 374.

Penalty, 375(2): "A violation of this chapter is a Class E crime for which a fine of not less than $250 must be adjudged. The unlawful excavation for any one day constitutes a separate violation." The court may also order payment of the cost of a proper archaeological excavation.

Everything turns on "protected site", 373-A(7-A):

"Protected site" means a site that is: A. On or under state-controlled land and is: (1) Listed in the National Register of Historic Places or judged eligible … and (2) Posted; B. The subject of a preservation agreement between the landowner or landowners and the Maine Historic Preservation Commission pursuant to Title 33, section 1551 and is: (1) Listed in the National Register of Historic Places; and (2) Posted; or C. Subject to section 378." [emergency designation]

"State-controlled land", 373-A(10): "any land or water area owned in fee simple by the State, with the exception of those lands contained within Baxter State Park."

How Maine can reach municipal land, and why it is not the same as Massachusetts. "Landowner" is defined at 373-A(3-A) to include "a municipality, county or other political subdivision of the State". That definition only does work through limb B – a preservation agreement, which the municipality enters voluntarily. Maine does not reach municipal land by force of the statute; it reaches municipal land the city has signed up.

And in every limb the site must be POSTED. Posting is an element of the definition, not a courtesy. That makes Maine the one state in the project whose rule is self-announcing: a detectorist standing on ground with no sign is not standing on a protected site, whoever owns it.

That is the entry, and it is genuinely reassuring in a way almost nothing else in this project is. It should be stated plainly rather than hedged.

Two more provisions for the page:

• 376(2): selling or offering to sell artifacts excavated from a protected site after the Act's effective date – "whether excavated lawfully or unlawfully" – without written permission carries a civil penalty of up to twice the sale price.
• 376(1): artifacts from a protected site on state-controlled land may not leave Maine permanently without the permittors' written permission. Maine is not in the New England definitional family either. Its operative term is "excavation", defined at 373-A(3) as "any turning over, removal or disturbance of the soil, artifact in the soil or ground matrix", expressly including "purposeful looting". That is a find/site formulation. Like Connecticut, Maine sits outside the intent-based group its neighbours share. Sources: legislature.maine.gov Title 27 chapter 13 PDF, sections 373-A, 374, 375, 376 and 378, parsed locally; 01-670 chapters 1, 3 and 4 as published by the Maine Secretary of State, read at source; 12 M.R.S. 1801 and 1803 at legislature.maine.gov, read 17 Oct 2026. Checked 17 October 2026.

2. Cities in Maine that publish a rule

1 city in Maine publishes a rule we can quote, out of 11 checked.

Of the 11 checked, 5 had pages on the city’s own site that we found and read. For the other 6 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 Maine. That is not a finding that Maine’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; Maine was not one of them.

4. Cities checked - no published rule

10 cities in Maine were checked and have no published rule on this page. Of those, 10 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 10 were checked on 13 September 2026, in one sweep, so that date applies to every row.

5. Clubs in Maine

6 in our directory for Maine - 4 verified against their own website or group, 2 we could not verify. Verified means we opened the link and read it. All Maine clubs on the club directory, with meeting nights and contacts where we have them.

• Central Maine Gold Prospectors - Facebook page · verified
• Digging Maine - Facebook group · verified
• Maine Gold Prospectors - Facebook group · verified
• Maine Metal Detecting - Facebook group · verified
• Bangor coin shooters - Bangor · could not verify
• Metal Detecting Maine - could not verify

6. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for Maine 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.