Metal Detecting in Nebraska

1. The rule, in full

Nebraska – Title 167 NAC, Chapter 6, section 001.02C, and the Act behind it

Read from the Nebraska Administrative Code as published by the Secretary of State at rules.nebraska.gov, Title 167 "State Parks Regulations", Chapter 6 "Property Preservation", effective 4 June 2025, retrieved through the site's own chapter API and read in full, checked 3 Oct 2026; and from the Nebraska Revised Statutes published by the Nebraska Legislature at nebraskalegislature.gov, chapter 82 index and sections 82-503, 82-507 and 82-508 in full, read 6 Oct 2026. The statute sections were added 6 Oct 2026.

Added 6 Oct 2026: the Nebraska Archaeological Resources Preservation Act

This entry had the park rule and not the statute. 167 NAC 6 is a Game and Parks Commission regulation and reaches Commission property. Nebraska also has an archaeology Act that reaches public land generally and private land too, and it was absent here.

How it surfaced, which is now the fourth time in five days: the generated Nebraska article said "Nebraska Statutes Chapter 82 and Administrative Code 163 reinforce these protections statewide". The Administrative Code reference is wrong – 163 is the misfiled citation this entry was itself corrected away from – but chapter 82 was right, and we did not have it. See the sweep README on the posts as a source of leads about our own coverage.

Note also that citation_gap.py did NOT catch this one. Its regex wants forms like "Neb. Rev. Stat. 82-507" and the post wrote "Nebraska Statutes Chapter 82", so the check reported nothing. A loose prose reference to a chapter is a shape the citation regex misses, and that is recorded as a limit of the check.

Operative text, Neb. Rev. Stat. 82-507(1), public land:

"Any person who knowingly and willfully appropriates, excavates, injures, or destroys any archaeological resource on public land without written permission from the State Archaeology Office is guilty of a Class III misdemeanor."

Operative text, Neb. Rev. Stat. 82-508, the land of another:

"No person shall enter or attempt to enter upon the lands of another without permission and intentionally appropriate, excavate, injure, or destroy any archaeological resource or any archaeological site. Any person committing such act is guilty of a Class III misdemeanor."

Definition, Neb. Rev. Stat. 82-503(1), and the fifty-year floor:

"Archaeological resource means any material object of past human life or activities that is of archaeological interest. Such objects include, but are not limited to, pottery, basketry, bottles, weapons, tools, structures or portions of structures, dwellings, rock paintings, rock carvings, intaglios, graves, human skeletal materials, or any portion or piece of any of such items. Nonfossilized and fossilized paleontological specimens, or any portion or piece thereof, shall not be considered archaeological resources unless found in an archaeological context. No object shall be treated as an archaeological resource under this subdivision unless such object is determined to be at least fifty years of age."

That is ARPA's structure with a different number, and it is worth saying so plainly because the two get confused constantly. Both require archaeological interest and impose an age floor the definition cannot go below. ARPA's floor is one hundred years, 16 U.S.C. 470bb(1); Nebraska's is fifty. Nebraska is therefore a fourth genuine fifty-year state threshold alongside Connecticut, Hawaii and Arizona, and it belongs in the ARPA explainer's list for the same reason they do.

"Public land" is NOT defined, and that is the finding rather than a gap in the reading. 82-503 defines six terms – archaeological resource, archaeological site, master archaeological site file, National Register of Historic Places, state agency, and undertaking. It does not define "public land", and the words "municipal", "city", "county" and "political subdivision" appear nowhere in 82-503, 82-507 or 82-508.

So whether 82-507(1) reaches a Nebraska city park is not answered by the Act, and this page does not answer it either. Ambiguous stays ambiguous (METHODOLOGY rule 13). A reader on municipal ground in Nebraska should treat the question as open rather than as settled in either direction.

What this does and does not change for a detectorist.

• It reaches appropriating as well as excavating, like Colorado's 24-80-409(1). Picking up a qualifying object is within it; no hole is needed.
• It requires "knowingly and willfully" on public land, and "intentionally" on the land of another. Digging a modern coin is neither. Recognising a fifty-year-old object of archaeological interest and taking it anyway is.
• The permission route on public land is written permission from the State Archaeology Office, which is a different body from the Park Superintendent who administers the park rule below, and a different body again from the Nebraska State Historical Society.
• It does not mention metal detectors. Chapter 82 was searched and the park rule remains the only Nebraska instrument that names them. Not established, and left open: whether sections 82-501 to 82-511 other than 503, 507 and 508 bear on this. The chapter index was read in full and no other section title suggested it, but a title is not an index (rule 11), so this is "nothing found in three sections read plus a title scan".

The park rule: 167 NAC 6

Rewritten 3 Oct 2026, and the citation was wrong in all three parts. The entry said "Title 163 NAC, Chapter 5, section 001.14C". Title 163 is "Administration" and its Chapter 5 is the Game and Parks Commission's licensing fee rules. The detector provision is in Title 167, Chapter 6, section 001.02C. Recorded in SOURCING-AUDIT.md.

The old entry also set out the beach conditions – the designated beaches, the 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. window, the hand-tool dimensions – as unquoted prose with no attribution, so a reader could not tell whether they were rule or agency policy. They are rule text, and they are now quoted with their subsection numbers.

Operative text, 167 NAC 6, section 001.02C:

"The possession and use of metal detectors is prohibited; provided, possession of such a device is permitted subject to the following provisions: 001.02C1 Metal detectors may be used year around at designated state recreation area swimming beaches posted as open to such activity. During the period May 22 through September 7, usage is restricted to the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., daily. Metal detectors must remain below the vegetation line above the beach. 001.02C2 Metal detectors are limited to portable, hand-held devices only and digging equipment is limited to hand tools not exceeding twelve inches in length by four inches in width and sand scoops and sieves not over ten inches in diameter. 001.02C3 Operators of a metal detector shall wear or carry a litter apron or bag, and all litter found is to be deposited in an approved trash receptacle. 001.02C4 Operators may keep any non-identifiable items with a nominal value of less than $25.00. Identifiable items, such as rings, watches, etc., and all other items of value exceeding $25.00 are to be deposited with the Park Superintendent. These provisions apply to all lost and found articles including those found without the aid of a metal detector. 001.02C5 All historical, archeological or paleontological items found are to be left undisturbed and their location reported to the Park Superintendent. 001.02C6 Use of metal detectors in State Parks and State Historical Parks is expressly prohibited except as herein provided. 001.02C7 Owners of lost items may use a metal detector in areas where their use is otherwise prohibited, only upon prior arrangement with the Park Superintendent."

Note the structure, because it is unusual. The rule prohibits possession as well as use, and then permits possession subject to the conditions. So the conditions are not a licence to detect wherever you like with a small trowel; they are the only circumstances in which carrying the device is lawful at all.

Three things the old entry did not carry, and a reader would want: the $25.00 line, above which a find goes to the Park Superintendent and which applies to anything found whether or not a detector was used; the litter apron or bag requirement; and the route at 001.02C7 by which the owner of a lost item may detect where detecting is otherwise prohibited, by prior arrangement.

Scope: Title 167 is "State Parks Regulations", and 001.02C6 names State Parks and State Historical Parks while 001.02C1 names state recreation areas – all Game and Parks Commission property.

Determination: Game and Parks Commission park land. Does NOT reach municipal parks.

Not yet checked: Title 166 "Wildlife Regulations" was searched for a detector provision and has none, but the forestry and wildlife sweep has not otherwise reached Nebraska.

Sources: rules.nebraska.gov chapter API, Title 167 Chapter 6 (chapter record id 1898, effective 4 June 2025), chapter text parsed locally. The Secretary of State also publishes 167 NAC 6 (06-04-2025)_Official.pdf; its blob endpoint returned a container error, so the chapter text above is the API's, from the same publisher. Checked 3 Oct 2026.

2. Cities in Nebraska that publish a rule

1 city in Nebraska publishes a rule we can quote, out of 16 checked.

Of the 16 checked, 10 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 Nebraska. That is not a finding that Nebraska’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; Nebraska was not one of them.

4. Cities checked - no published rule

15 cities in Nebraska were checked and have no published rule on this page. Of those, 15 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 15 were checked on 13 September 2026, in one sweep, so that date applies to every row.

5. Clubs in Nebraska

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

• Lincoln Detecting Club - Facebook group · Lincoln · verified
• South Central Nebraska Metal Detecting Club - Facebook group · verified
• Midwest Historical Detector Club - Facebook group · Omaha · could not verify
• Nebraskaland Metal Detectors Club - Lincoln · could not verify

6. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for Nebraska 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.