Metal Detecting in New Hampshire

1. The rule, in full

New Hampshire – RSA 227-C, and it contains the only express metal detecting exemption found anywhere in this project

SWEEP FINDING, 8 Oct 2026: the most specific answer in the directory

This entry rested on RSA 227-C, which gives New Hampshire the only enumerated statutory permission in the project. The parks rules go further and say exactly where, how deep, and what happens to what you find.

Read from NH Code of Administrative Rules Chapter Res 7300, "Parks and Recreation", adopted rule effective 1 March 2014, 70,413 characters extracted; Res 7301.19, Res 7301.20 and Res 7301.27 read in full. Checked 8 Oct 2026.

Res 7301.19 Metal Detectors. "(a) Metal detectors shall not be permitted on DRED properties unless otherwise stated in this section or if permitted by special use permit pursuant to Res 7400.
(b) Metal detectors shall be permitted along the shoreline of beaches and at athletic fields, playgrounds, and within a 25 foot radius from picnic tables and pavilions, unless otherwise posted.
(c) Metal detectors shall not be permitted at state historic sites and natural areas listed in Res 101.06, or Odiorne Point state park.
(d) Money or items found whose value is in excess of $50.00 shall be subject to Res 7301.27, Lost and Found Items."

That (b) list is the most precise permission in this directory. No other state names playgrounds and a measured radius around picnic tables. It is a standing permission, not a permit: within those places you need nothing, unless a sign says otherwise.

Res 7301.20 Digging. "(a) Digging shall be permitted on sand beaches, with all resulting holes completely filled in prior to leaving the site. Digging holes to a depth greater than 12 inches shall not be permitted.
(b) Digging and other ground disturbances shall not be permitted on DRED properties, historic sites, and DRED natural areas unless permission has been granted by special use permit pursuant to Res 7400 in cooperation with the department of cultural resources, division of historical resources pursuant to RSA 227-C:9."

Read 7301.19(b) against 7301.20(a) and the practical answer narrows. You may sweep at an athletic field, a playground or beside a picnic table. You may only dig on a sand beach. So the places you can lawfully recover a target are narrower than the places you can lawfully search, and the page should say so rather than quoting only the generous subsection.

And New Hampshire has a complete finder's scheme, which almost no state does:

Res 7301.27 Lost and Found Items. "(a) Any person who finds on a DRED property by whatever means money or items whose value is in excess of $50.00 shall report to and leave such money or items with an authorized DRED personnel.
(b) The authorized DRED personnel shall take the following steps: (1) If the money or items was reported by a park guest as lost or missing, such money or items shall be returned to the park guest upon adequate proof of ownership; or (2) If the money or items was not reported as lost or missing, such money or items shall be retained by the authorized DRED personnel in a safe for a period of 60 days; and (3) Shall be returned to the finder if the money or items are not claimed following the 60 day period."

So: report anything over $50, wait sixty days, and it is yours. That is Iowa's twelve-month structure at a fraction of the wait, and it is a "shall" duty with a stated threshold – one more row for the please-should-shall table.

Determination: DRED properties. Does NOT reach municipal parks.

Read from the consolidated chapter at gc.nh.gov (General Court), parsed locally.

The provision that matters most, RSA 227-C:12(II)

"Treasure hunting with metal detectors and dowsing rods is exempted from the restrictions of this subdivision on the following lands owned or controlled by the state, its agencies, departments, commissions, and institutions, unless an historic resource on such land has been recorded and restrictions are posted: (a) Beaches; (b) Athletic fields; (c) School grounds; (d) Perimeters of cemeteries; (e) Unpaved roads; (f) Within 25 feet of picnic tables and park pavilions; and (g) Currently used dumps."

No other state in the project has anything like this. Every other state either prohibits, requires permission, or is silent. New Hampshire legislated an enumerated permission, naming seven kinds of land, with a single stated condition – a recorded historic resource with posted restrictions. Quote it in full on the page and quote the list as a list. It is the most useful single provision found in the entire state pass.

Note precisely what it covers: land "owned or controlled by the state, its agencies, departments, commissions, and institutions". It does not say political subdivisions, so it does not extend to city parks.

The rest of the chapter

Definition, RSA 227-C:1(IV) – the broadest in the New England family:

"'Field investigation' means the search for, identification of, and evaluation of historic resources, and the study of the traces of human culture at any land or underwater historic property, by means of inspection, surveying, digging, excavating, or removing surface or subsurface objects, or going onto a site with that intent."

The state's reserved right, RSA 227-C:7(I) – narrower than the definition:

"the state, acting through the commissioner, reserves to itself the exclusive right and privilege to conduct, or cause to be conducted, field investigations of historic resources that involve the alteration of the surface or subsurface of the resource and removal of any surface or subsurface objects."

So the sweeping definition is cut back at the point it bites: the reserved right covers only investigations that both alter the ground and remove something. A sweep that finds nothing and digs nothing is outside it.

Penalty, RSA 227-C:17(II):

"any person who knowingly appropriates, excavates, sells, purchases, exchanges, offers for sale, transports, receives, destroys, or in any manner alters any historic resource located on state land, under state waters, or removed from same, except in the course of activities pursued under the authority of a permit or preservation agreement, or as exempted in RSA 227-C:12, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine not exceeding $1,000 or by imprisonment for a period not to exceed 6 months, or both; shall forfeit to the state all materials appropriated; and shall reimburse the state for restoration of a defaced or destroyed property."

The split that must not be flattened

The criminal offence is state land only. The title claim is not.

RSA 227-C:6: "The state, acting through the commissioner, reserves to itself title of ownership of all historic resources … on or from:
I. Lands owned or controlled by the state, its agencies, departments, commissions, institutions or political subdivisions."

Read together: digging a historic resource out of a New Hampshire city park is not the RSA 227-C:17 misdemeanour, because that section says "state land". But the object is the State's property and not the finder's, because 227-C:6(I) says political subdivisions. The consequence on municipal land is civil, about ownership, not criminal.

That distinction is the entry. A page that says "New Hampshire prohibits" is wrong, and a page that says "New Hampshire allows" is also wrong. It says: on these seven kinds of state land, go ahead unless it is posted; anywhere on public land in the state including your city park, anything historic you find belongs to the State.

Also recorded: RSA 227-C:10 says certification of avocational archaeologists "is not to be misconstrued as an authorization to collect or excavate without a permit", and RSA 227-C:11 puts a confidentiality duty on political subdivisions over archaeological site locations.

Source: gc.nh.gov RSA XIX 227-C (227-C-mrg.htm), parsed locally. Checked 20 Sep 2026.

2. Where it reaches city and county land

New Hampshire – RSA 227-C:6(I) (title only, no criminal reach)

Qualified entry, and the qualification is the whole point. New Hampshire names political subdivisions in one place and not in the other, and the two provisions have different consequences.

Reaches municipal land – RSA 227-C:6:

"The state, acting through the commissioner, reserves to itself title of ownership of all historic resources, except for human remains …, on or from: I. Lands owned or controlled by the state, its agencies, departments, commissions, institutions or political subdivisions."

Does NOT reach municipal land – RSA 227-C:17(II), the criminal provision:

"any person who knowingly appropriates, excavates, sells, purchases, exchanges, offers for sale, transports, receives, destroys, or in any manner alters any historic resource located on state land, under state waters, or removed from same … shall be guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine not exceeding $1,000 or by imprisonment for a period not to exceed 6 months, or both; shall forfeit to the state all materials appropriated."

So on a New Hampshire city park: no misdemeanour, but the historic resource you dug up is the State's property and not yours. A civil ownership consequence, not a criminal one.

This is the sharpest example in the project of why scope has to be read per provision rather than per statute. Both sections sit in the same chapter, a few pages apart, and they answer the municipal question differently. Anyone reading only 227-C:17 would put New Hampshire outside this file; anyone reading only 227-C:6 would put it in alongside Massachusetts. Neither is right.

Definition, RSA 227-C:1(IV) – the broadest of the family, adding "the search for, identification of, and evaluation of historic resources" and "inspection" to the usual formula, and keeping "or going onto a site with that intent".

Axis: activity – but narrowed where it bites. RSA 227-C:7(I) reserves to the state only field investigations "that involve the alteration of the surface or subsurface of the resource and removal of any surface or subsurface objects". Both limbs, conjunctive.

And New Hampshire contains the only express metal detecting permission in the project, RSA 227-C:12(II), exempting "[t]reasure hunting with metal detectors and dowsing rods" on seven enumerated kinds of state land unless a recorded historic resource is posted. It covers state land only – not political subdivisions – so it does not soften the 227-C:6 title claim on city parks. The full quotation is in the New Hampshire entry in STATE-LAND-remaining.md and should be reproduced on the page in full.

Directory entry should read: in New Hampshire, anything of historic significance found on state, county or municipal land belongs to the State. On state land there is no offence at all for detecting on beaches, athletic fields, school grounds, cemetery perimeters, unpaved roads, near picnic tables and pavilions, or current dumps, unless restrictions are posted. On city land there is no criminal provision – but the title claim still applies to what you find.

3. Cities in New Hampshire that publish a rule

3 cities in New Hampshire publish a rule we can quote, out of 11 checked.

Of the 11 checked, 9 had pages on the city’s own site that we found and read. For the other 2 we could not locate a municipal source, so nothing is claimed about them either way.

4. County rules

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

5. Cities checked - no published rule

8 cities in New Hampshire were checked and have no published rule on this page. Of those, 8 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 8 were checked on 13 September 2026, in one sweep, so that date applies to every row.

6. Clubs in New Hampshire

3 in our directory for New Hampshire - 0 verified against their own website or group, 3 we could not verify. Verified means we opened the link and read it. All New Hampshire clubs on the club directory, with meeting nights and contacts where we have them.

• Granite State TH’ers Club - could not verify
• Northeast Metal Detecting Forum - could not verify
• Yankee Treasure Hunters Club - could not verify

7. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for New Hampshire 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.