On state park land
Prohibited Permission needed
Banned outright at seventeen named historic sites and battlefields. Everywhere else you need a signed permit from the park manager before each visit, and any modern jewellery you find goes to the park office.
1. The rule, in full
South Carolina – SCPRT Metal Detection Policy
Recovered 20 Sep 2026. Read from the policy document South Carolina State Parks' own FAQ links to, retrieved from SCPRT's asset store and read page by page.
The prohibition
"Metal detection is prohibited at State Historic Site properties. The primary emphasis of management at State Historic Sites is to preserve cultural resources. Additionally, other State Parks encompass historical areas that are significant known archeological sites, including sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The State Park Service afford such sites the same protections as are allocated for State Historic Sites."
"Accordingly, use of metal detectors is prohibited at the following locations:"
The policy names seventeen properties, and the list is the useful part. It should be reproduced in full rather than summarised: Blackstock Battlefield Site; Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site; Colonial Dorchester State Historic Site; Edisto Beach Spanish Mount Shell Mound; Francis Marion Burial Site; Hampton Plantation State Historic Site; Hanging Rock; Hunting Island State Park Lighthouse Complex; Isaac Hayne Burial Site; Landsford Canal State Park; Long Bluff; Musgrove Mill State Historic Site; Oconee Station State Historic Site; Redcliffe Plantation State Historic Site; Rivers Bridge State Historic Site; Rose Hill Plantation State Historic Site; Thomas Sumter Burial Site.
Everywhere else – the default is prohibition
"While metal detecting may be allowed in certain areas at some parks, it is to be assumed that State Parks have an absolute prohibition against metal detecting. Any metal detecting should be guided by the respective park's mission and core resources, while giving consideration to this activity's potential impacts. All metal detecting activities on State Parks require prior approval of the Park Manager or the Park Manager's designee."
The five guidelines, quoted because each one is operative:
"A. Metal detecting should be conducted only in non-sensitive areas where responsible recreational metal detecting is to be allowed. Areas such as those containing delicate or exemplary structures (such as historic buildings), land formations (such as sand dunes), and other sensitive resources (such as rare/endangered or fragile vegetations or habitats) will be absolutely restricted from metal detecting." "B. Digging is restricted to areas where damage will not occur. Areas susceptible to damage such as forested areas, erosion prone areas (such as slopes), lawns and landscaped areas will not be disturbed. Metal detector use will be prohibited in areas where power lines, water lines, sewer lines, phone lines/cables, etc. are known to be buried." "C. Prior to each use of a metal detector, visitors must secure the approval of the Park Manager. A signed permit shall be issued and must be in the possession of the permittee when on the park. Such permit shall specify the area(s), date(s) and times approved for metal detecting, as well as other special conditions." "D. Historic or prehistoric artifacts will not be removed from the park. If a visitor discovers historic or prehistoric artifacts while using a metal detector, he/she is to leave the artifacts in place and notify a member of the park staff." "E. Modern, personal items such as jewelry, class rings, etc. will be turned over to the park manager."
Guideline E is worth flagging on the page. Most states let a detectorist keep modern lost property or run a lost-and-found interval. South Carolina requires modern personal items to be handed to the park manager with no stated claim period. That is stricter than it first reads and is the sort of clause a summary drops.
Authority
"Section 51-3-70 (Rules and Regulations for State Parks) of the 1976 Code of Laws of South Carolina authorizes the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism to make such rules and regulations as it deems advisable for the protection, preservation, operation, use, and maintenance and for the most beneficial service to the general public of the State Parks in this state. In addition, removal of cultural artifacts from state parks may be considered a violation of Title 16 (Crimes and Offenses) of the Code."
Scope: SCPRT state park and state historic site properties. Does NOT reach municipal parks. Status is permit_required everywhere except the seventeen named properties, where it is prohibited.
On the municipal question, South Carolina's other instruments are state land too: the Underwater Antiquities Act (Title 54, chapter 7) governs submerged resources, and SCDAH describes S.C. Code 60-12-10 et seq. as a review process for "historic properties owned or leased by the State of South Carolina". Neither names counties or municipalities. Recorded as a scope orientation from the agency's own description, not from a full read of the statutes – if the state page is going to cite 60-12, quote it from the statute first, per rule 11.
How this was recovered, because the method generalises
Two separate failures sat between the FAQ and the text, and each one looked like an answer:
- The link the FAQ publishes does not return the document. It points at an
/embed/ path on the agency's asset store, which serves an HTML viewer with a PDF content-type expectation – 24 KB of markup, not a policy. Substituting /download/ for /embed/ in the same URL returns the real 124 KB PDF. The document was never missing; the published link was wrong.
- The PDF's text layer is unreadable. Its fonts are subset TrueType with
no /ToUnicode map, no /Encoding, and a version 3.0 post table carrying no glyph names. pypdf and pdftotext both return only whitespace and stray punctuation – which is indistinguishable from an empty document. Font cmap inversion did not help either, because the content-stream codes are subset indices with no route back to Unicode. The text was recovered by rendering the pages and reading them.
Both failures are this project's recurring shape: a check that fails in a way that looks like a result. pdf_cmap_recover.py was written for the second one and kept, and it prints an explicit warning when a PDF still extracts as empty rather than returning silence.
Source: southcarolinaparks.com FAQ, linking SCPRT's "Metal Detection Policy" (3 pp.), retrieved via the download path and read page by page. Checked 20 Sep 2026.
2. Cities in South Carolina that publish a rule
Awaiting review. None of the city or county rows publishes until its status is set and its quotation chosen by hand.
3. County rules
Awaiting review. None of the city or county rows publishes until its status is set and its quotation chosen by hand.
4. Cities checked — no published rule
Awaiting review. None of the city or county rows publishes until its status is set and its quotation chosen by hand.