Metal Detecting in Maryland

1. The rule, in full

Maryland – COMAR 08.07.06.18

Read from the official Code of Maryland Regulations published by the Division of State Documents (dsd.maryland.gov), regulation 08.07.06.18 in full. Re-read 3 Oct 2026, and it corrected two things set out below.

Corrected 3 Oct 2026. The previous version named the wrong body for the permission and omitted one of the two exception windows. Recorded in SOURCING-AUDIT.md.

Operative text, 08.07.06.18 "Relics, Treasures, and Metal Detectors":

A. "The policy of the Service is to safeguard the archeological resources under its care."
B. "Without a permit from the Office of Archeology, Maryland Historical Trust, Department of Housing and Community Development, and the Department, an individual may not dig in search of buried relics or treasures, remove prehistoric or historic artifacts, or use metal detectors, except as provided in D."
D. "Metal Detector Exception.
(1) An exception to the permit requirements of this regulation is for the use of a metal detector in the search for modern coins, jewelry, and other items on designated swimming beaches operated by the Service, with the exceptions of Point Lookout and Calvert Cliffs.
(2) An individual shall obtain permission to use a metal detector as set forth in this regulation from the Service.
(3) A metal detector may be used during normal park hours with the following exceptions:
(a) 9 a.m. through dusk from May 30 through Labor Day; and
(b) Other times at the discretion of the park manager."

The two corrections, because both change what a reader should do.

Permission comes from the Service, not the park manager. D(2) says "from the Service" – the Maryland Park Service. The previous entry sent readers to the Park Manager. The park manager appears in this regulation only in D(3)(b), and for a different purpose.

The published window is not the whole answer. D(3) gives two exceptions to normal park hours, and the entry carried only the first. Besides the 9 a.m. to dusk closure from 30 May to Labor Day, D(3)(b) allows closure at "other times at the discretion of the park manager". So a reader who checks the calendar and the clock can still be turned away, and the page now says so rather than implying the season and the hours settle it.

Two smaller fixes inside the quotation marks: the rule says "designated swimming beaches", not "all designated swimming beaches", and "9 a.m.", not "9:00 a.m.".

A second regulation, same title, different agency: COMAR 34.04.08.25

Added 8 Oct 2026. Found by chasing a reference URL on the Maryland post, which stated this rule's substance without its number.

COMAR 34.04.08.25, "Relics, Treasures, and Metal Detectors" – note the title is identical to 08.07.06.18's:

A. "A person may not dig in search of buried relics or treasure, remove any prehistoric or historic artifacts, or use a metal detector within the boundaries of a State museum unless the person first obtains a permit from the Maryland Historical Trust, and express permission from the museum director."
B. "The museum director may grant permission under SectionA of this regulation only to archaeologists and other qualified persons or institutions experienced in scientific research, who present a plan for scientific investigations, as provided by State Finance and Procurement Article, Title 5A, Subtitle 3, Part IV, Annotated Code of Maryland."

Two permissions, not one. A Trust permit is not enough inside a State museum; the museum director must also agree. And (B) states the test the director applies, which no other Maryland instrument spells out: archaeologists and qualified researchers with a scientific plan.

Source: regs.maryland.gov us/md/exec/comar/34.04.08.25. Read 8 Oct 2026.

MHT's own page, and the reporting question

Read from the Maryland Historical Trust at mht.maryland.gov, identify-document/report-artifact-discovery/metal-detecting-maryland, 8 Oct 2026. Agency policy, dated separately from the regulations above.

The Trust confirms the regulatory picture and settles one thing no regulation addresses:

"If you find something that appears to be more than 50 years old, like evidence of an old historic site or other historic activity, please report it to MHT. Your report helps us document significant places in the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties (Archaeology)."

That is a request, and the page must not restate it as a duty. Secondary guides routinely turn it into "items over 50 years old must be reported", including on private land. No provision of COMAR 08.07.06.18, COMAR 34.04.08.25, 5A-340 or 5A-342 imposes a reporting obligation on a finder, and MHT itself says that on private land items "generally belong to" the landowner.

Also from the same page, and useful:

"Metal detecting on state-owned land requires an archaeology permit from MHT, which is usually reserved only for professional archaeologists." "MHT does not issue permits for metal detecting on private, federal, or local land."

Note the two permissions a reader will otherwise conflate: the MHT archaeology permit is what you do NOT need at a designated swimming beach; the Service's permission under D(2) is what you DO need.

Scope. COMAR 08.07.06 is "Use of State Parks". DNR's own page states the prohibition runs to "lands, beaches, or under waters controlled by the Maryland Park Service".

Determination: Maryland Park Service land only. Does NOT reach municipal parks.

The statute was checked separately, because Maryland's archaeological statutes do use the phrase "political subdivision" and that is exactly the shape that caught Kansas. It does not reach here:

Md. Code, State Fin. & Proc. 5A-342(a): "Without a permit, a person may not excavate, remove, destroy, injure, deface, or disturb a terrestrial archaeological site on land that the State owns or controls."

Md. Code, State Fin. & Proc. 5A-340(a): "Submerged archaeological historic property on or taken from underwater land over which the State has sovereign control is the property of the State."

"[L]and that the State owns or controls" does not reach a city park. The "political subdivision" definition in Part IV governs who may be a party to Trust agreements, not whose land the permit requirement covers. Recorded so the next person does not have to re-check it.

Exception worth carrying to the page verbatim: the designated-swimming-beach carve-out is one of the few genuinely permissive state-park provisions found so far, and it is narrowed three ways – modern coins and jewellery only, two named parks excluded, and a seasonal daytime blackout.

Sources: regs.maryland.gov COMAR 08.07.06.18; dnr.maryland.gov publiclands/Pages/MetalDetecting.aspx; mgaleg.maryland.gov statute text. Checked 19 Sep 2026.

What was read for the land-class sweep, and what was not. Read: COMAR 08.03.02.18 and the definitions at 08.03.02.01. Not read: the remainder of COMAR 08.03, which was reached by search rather than read. The finding above therefore covers what was read and nothing beyond it – see sweep/README.md, "A KNOWN LIMIT OF THIS SWEEP", on why a chapter set aside on its title is an unread chapter.

The rulemaking statute, which is wider than the regulation and carries a condition

COMAR 08.07.06.18 is a State Park Service regulation. The statute it was made under says which land the Department may regulate, and the list is longer than "state parks":

Md. Code, Natural Resources 5-209(a): "The Department may make rules and regulations for the maintenance of order, safety, sanitation, traffic control, or for the protection of trees and other property and the preservation of the natural beauty within the State parks and forests, State reserves, scenic preserves, parkways, historical monuments, recreational areas, and any other lands under its control. The rules and regulations shall be posted in conspicuous places upon the lands and enforced by the forest and park officers."

Two things in that sentence matter to a detectorist. The authority covers state forests, reserves, scenic preserves, parkways and historical monuments as well as parks, so a Maryland reader cannot narrow the question to a park boundary. And the rules "shall be posted in conspicuous places upon the lands" – a posting requirement written into the statute itself, which is unusual in this directory and is worth a reader's attention, because it means the regulation's own enabling act contemplates the visitor being told on site.

The penalty, found 19 October 2026 at the end of the title

The grading is not in the parks subtitle at all. It is in subtitle 13, nine subtitles past 5-209, and it is written to catch exactly this case:

Md. Code, Natural Resources 5-1301: (a) "Any person who violates any provision of this title is guilty of a misdemeanor. Upon conviction in a court of competent jurisdiction, unless another penalty is specifically provided elsewhere in this title, the person is subject to a fine not exceeding $500, with costs imposed in the discretion of the court." (b) "Any person found guilty of a second or subsequent violation of any provision of this title… unless another penalty is specifically provided elsewhere in this title, is subject to a fine not exceeding $1,000, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both with costs imposed in the discretion of the court. For the purpose of this subsection, a second or subsequent violation is one which has occurred within two years of any prior violation of this title." (c) "In addition to any administrative penalty provided in this title, violation of any rule or regulation promulgated by any unit within the Department pursuant to the provisions of this title is a misdemeanor and is punishable as provided in subsections (a) and (b) of this section."

Subsection (c) is the one that closes the chain, and every link in it is express. COMAR 08.07.06 is a regulation. It was promulgated by a unit within the Department – the State Park Service, whose officers COMAR 08.07.06.01(B)(1) defines by reference to Natural Resources 5-206. And it was made pursuant to 5-209, which sits in Title 5. So detecting on State Park Service land without the 08.07.06.18(B) permit, or digging in search of relics without it, is a misdemeanour punishable by a fine of up to $500, rising to up to $1,000 or a year's imprisonment, or both, on a second violation within two years.

Three things to keep straight about this penalty.

The ceiling is low and the escalation is real: the two-year window in (b) means a second citation is a materially different proposition from the first. The words "unless another penalty is specifically provided elsewhere in this title" matter, because Title 5 does provide specific penalties in places – $2,000 and $5,000 for roadside trees under 5-406(e), the forest-fire offences at 5-704 and 5-711 – and none of those applies to a park detector permit, so 5-1301 is the operative grading here rather than a fallback that something else displaces. And 5-1301(c) is expressly "in addition to any administrative penalty", so a permit refusal or revocation is not an alternative to the misdemeanour.

5-1302 adds where the money goes: a fine imposed by the District Court is collected under District Court law, and a fine imposed by a circuit court for a county, less collection costs, "shall be paid to the Forest or Park Reserve Fund".

Who enforces it, which the Code states twice

Natural Resources 5-206(a): "The Secretary may commission any person to act as a forest or park warden… While holding office, a warden has and may exercise the authority and power of a Natural Resources police officer or a law enforcement officer as provided in his commission so far as arresting and prosecuting persons for violations of any forest or park laws or of the laws, rules and regulations enacted for the protection of the State forestry reservations, State parks, historic monuments, recreation areas, or for the protection of fish and game."

Natural Resources 5-701(a): "A forest or park warden shall enforce every forest and park law, rule, and regulation of the State and protect State forest reserves, State parks, scenic preserves, parkways, historic monuments, and recreational areas."

5-206(b) commissions forest, park and wildlife rangers with Natural Resources police powers and lists eight categories of land and water where those powers reach, including all public and private properties within the boundaries of State properties managed by the Department and all waters of the State within one mile of the shoreline of Department property. 5-206(c) is narrower and worth not over-reading: a park ranger who is not commissioned as a law enforcement officer may issue a citation for a parking violation only.

How the search went, because the first attempt looked in the wrong place

The penalty was recorded on 18 Oct 2026 as "looked for and not found", on the strength of 5-209, 5-210, 5-212 and a section numbered 1-704. That was a bad guess rather than a gap: Natural Resources 1-704 is part of the Chesapeake Bay Trust subtitle and has nothing to do with penalties.

On 19 Oct 2026 the whole of Title 5 was walked over the statute PDF route – 526 section numbers tried, of which 163 exist and 363 return 404 – and every section's text searched for grading language. Fourteen sections in Title 5 carry penalty language, and 5-1301 is the only one that reaches a regulation made under 5-209. The others are subject-specific: 5-406 and 5-421 to 5-423 on roadside trees and licensed tree experts, 5-606 on district forestry boards, 5-701 to 5-714 on forest fires, and 5-1402 to 5-1405 on caves.

The part of the title that contains 5-209 has no penalty section of its own. The sections that exist in the 5-2xx range are 5-201, 5-202, 5-204 and 5-206 through 5-222, plus 5-212.1; 5-203, 5-205 and everything from 5-223 upwards return 404. Every one of them was searched and none carries penalty language, so the grading genuinely is not local to the parks provisions.

*Corrected 19 Oct 2026: the first version of this paragraph said the range ran only to 5-212, which was wrong – 5-213 to 5-222 exist. The conclusion did not change, because the walk had already searched them, but one of them turned out to matter for a different reason. See the next section.* Nor does COMAR 08.07.06: its twenty-seven regulations, .01 to .27, were checked and the only penalty language in the chapter is in .14, "Traffic and Parking", about citations.

Who owns what you find, which is a one-year rule

The 5-2xx walk turned up a section this page had no entry for, and it answers the question a detectorist asks after the permit question:

Md. Code, Natural Resources 5-213: "An item lost or abandoned within a State forest, park, or wildlife management area and unclaimed for one year becomes the property of the State, and the Secretary may dispose of the item in the best interest of the State."

Four things in one sentence, and each is worth separating out.

It covers an item lost or abandoned, which is the ordinary modern drop a detector finds, and not only something archaeological. The trigger is time, not age: one year unclaimed, measured from the loss rather than from the manufacture, so a coin dropped last summer is not caught and a coin dropped in 1960 is. Title passes to the State, not to the finder, and the Secretary may then dispose of it. And the land reach includes wildlife management areas, which COMAR 08.07.06 does not – that chapter is the State Park Service's.

How this sits with the permit. 08.07.06.18(D) allows the search for modern coins and jewellery in some circumstances without the full permit, and 5-213 then says what happens to what is recovered: if it has lain unclaimed a year, it is the State's property. The two provisions are not in conflict – one is about whether you may look, the other about who owns the result – but a reader who has only read the first will draw the wrong conclusion about keeping a find. Nothing in 5-213 creates a duty to report a find; it governs title, and this page has found no Maryland reporting duty.

Caves, and a second excavation prohibition with its own permit

The Title 5 walk turned up a subtitle this entry had no reason to expect, and it carries a flat prohibition on excavation that a detectorist can breach:

Natural Resources 5-1405(a): "A person may not excavate, remove, destroy, injure, deface, or in any manner disturb any paleontological site or any part thereof, including saltpeter workings, fossils, bones, or any other paleontological features which may be found in any cave."

5-1402(a)(1), which needs the owner's permission rather than the State's: a person may not, "without express, prior, written permission of an owner, wilfully or knowingly… remove, or in any manner destroy, disturb, deface, mar, or harm the surfaces of any cave or any natural material which may be found therein whether attached or broken, including speleothems, speleogens, and sedimentary deposits", nor "disturb or alter in any manner the natural condition of any cave". (a)(2) is the saving clause: "the entering or remaining in a cave by itself shall not constitute a violation of this section."

Why this reaches further than it sounds. "Cave" is defined at 5-1401(b) to mean "any naturally occurring void, cavity, recess, or system of interconnecting passages beneath the surface of the earth or within a cliff or ledge", and the term "includes or is synonymous with cavern, sinkhole, grotto, and rock shelter". A rock shelter is precisely the kind of place that holds material worth detecting, and on this definition it is a cave.

The 5-1405 permit is not a hobby permit either. 5-1405(b) lets the Secretary issue a two-year, non-transferable permit to excavate or remove paleontological features, and 5-1405(c) requires the applicant to "have knowledge of paleontology", to give a detailed statement of reasons, objectives and expected benefits, to file data and results annually, and to obtain the Secretary's prior written permission where the site is on State-owned land. Maryland therefore joins Virginia, Kansas and Alaska: the permit exists and a recreational detectorist cannot satisfy it.

Both prohibitions are in Title 5, so 5-1301 grades them: up to $500, and up to $1,000 or a year on a second violation within two years.

A retrieval note worth keeping

mgaleg.maryland.gov serves the Annotated Code two ways and only one of them works unattended:

• Works: https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2026RS/Statute_Web/gnr/5-1301.pdf – substitute the section number. One section per PDF, about 240 KB each. A section that does not exist answers 404 with about 1,245 bytes, so existence is the status code and a walk is straightforward.
• Does not work: .../mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gnr&section=5-1301 returns the site's navigation chrome with "Bill number does not exist" for every section, whatever the number. A 200 from that route means nothing, and reading it as a document is what produced the 18 Oct "not found" record. Deepened 19 Oct 2026. Md. Code, Natural Resources 5-206, 5-213, 5-701, 5-1301, 5-1302, 5-1401, 5-1402 and 5-1405 read that day from mgaleg.maryland.gov, the Maryland General Assembly's own statute service, and archived with their sha256; 5-1302 is 470 characters and was archived past the thin-read guard deliberately, being a complete two-subsection document, and 5-213 is 313 characters for the same reason, being a single sentence. COMAR 08.07.06 regulations .01 to .27 were checked the same day at dsd.maryland.gov for a penalty regulation and there is none.

2. Cities in Maryland that publish a rule

1 city in Maryland publishes a rule we can quote, out of 24 checked.

Of the 24 checked, 21 had pages on the city’s own site that we found and read. For the other 3 we could not locate a municipal source, so nothing is claimed about them either way.

3. County rules

County rules exist in Maryland, and they govern county land only. 3 county rules 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 3 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

23 cities in Maryland were checked and have no published rule on this page. Of those, 20 returned no rule, and 3 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 23 were checked on 13 September 2026, in one sweep, so that date applies to every row.

5. Clubs in Maryland

10 in our directory for Maryland - 7 verified against their own website or group, 3 we could not verify. Verified means we opened the link and read it. All Maryland clubs on the club directory, with meeting nights and contacts where we have them.

• Eastern Shore Treasure Club - Facebook page · Stevensville · verified
• Maryland Artifact Recovery Society - Facebook page · Bel Air · verified
• Maryland Free-State Treasure Club - marylandfreestateclub.com · verified
• Metal Detecting Maryland - Facebook group · verified
• NORTHERN MARYLAND DIRT DIGGERS - Facebook group · verified
• Shore Seekers Artifact and Recovery Club - shoreseekers.org · Salisbury · verified
• South Mountain Relic and Coin Club - Facebook group · Williamsport · verified
• Chesapeake Society of Hunters - could not verify
• Maryland Artifact Recovery Society (M.A.R.S.) - could not verify
• Maryland Relic Hunters Association Metal Detecting Club - could not verify

6. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for Maryland 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.