Metal Detecting in Tennessee

1. The rule, in full

Tennessee – 0400-2-2-.18(6)

Read from the compiled chapter published by the Tennessee Secretary of State at publications.tnsosfiles.com, "Rules of Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Division of State Parks, Chapter 0400-2-2, Public Use and Recreation", footed "December, 2003 (Revised)", parsed locally. Checked 3 Oct 2026.

Rewritten 3 Oct 2026. The previous version of this entry put a summary in the operative-text slot – no quotation marks, no subsection, and a scope clause that is not in the provision. Recorded in SOURCING-AUDIT.md. The summary was substantively close, and one difference matters, below.

Operative text, 0400-2-2-.18(6):

"The use of any mineral or metal detecting device capable of detecting the underground or underwater location of geological, archaeological or historical objects or materials is prohibited. Provided, however, that this section shall not apply to:
(a) fathometers, radar equipment and electronic equipment used primarily for the navigation and safe operation of boats and aircraft; and
(b) to persons possessing a permit from the State Archaeologist to conduct legitimate archaeological research when such permit is signed by the Director of Parks and Recreation; and
(c) to an individual engaged in a limited search for a lost item under supervision of the park Superintendent." Authority: T.C.A. 11-1-108. Administrative History: Original rule certified May 24, 1974. Amendment filed August 24, 1987; effective October 8, 1987.

The difference that matters: the provision does not say "in state parks". The old summary ended "is prohibited in Tennessee state parks". The rule ends "is prohibited", full stop. Nothing in subsection (6) names a place at all.

Scope is carried by the chapter, not by the sentence, and this entry says so rather than folding it into the quotation. Chapter 0400-2-2 is headed "Rules of Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Division of State Parks – Public Use and Recreation", and rule .18 is "Preservation of Public Property, Natural Features, Curiosities and Resources". The chapter contains no applicability or definitions rule, so the confinement to Division of State Parks land rests on the chapter's heading and the promulgating division rather than on an express scope clause. That is weaker than most states in this directory and worth knowing.

Determination: Division of State Parks land. Does NOT reach municipal parks.

Not yet checked, and recorded as unchecked: Tennessee's other public land sits under different agencies – the Wildlife Resources Agency for wildlife management areas and the Division of Forestry for state forests – and neither has been read for a detector provision. The forestry and wildlife sweep has not reached Tennessee.

Separate and worth a state-level note: the Division of Archaeology holds the exclusive right to excavate on state land, artifacts from state land are property of the State of Tennessee, and defacing sites is a misdemeanour.

Source: publications.tnsosfiles.com rules 0400-02-02. Checked 19 Sep 2026.

2. Cities in Tennessee that publish a rule

2 cities in Tennessee publish a rule we can quote, out of 61 checked.

Of the 61 checked, 31 had pages on the city’s own site that we found and read. For the other 30 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 Tennessee. That is not a finding that Tennessee’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; Tennessee was not one of them.

4. Cities checked - no published rule

59 cities in Tennessee were checked and have no published rule on this page. Of those, 59 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 59 were checked on 13 September 2026, in one sweep, so that date applies to every row. 1 has no municipal site recorded and is shown without a link rather than dropped, because dropping them would understate what was checked.

5. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for Tennessee 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.