Metal Detecting in Utah

1. The rule, in full

Utah – TWO land classes, and the one with no signs carries the worst penalty

READ THIS FIRST: Utah trust lands are not state parks, and you will not see a boundary

Utah has two instruments and they belong to different agencies. A reader who skims for "state parks" will miss the one most likely to cost them.

That last row is the reason this section is at the top of the page. Millions of acres of Utah are trust land. It looks like ordinary open country. There is commonly nothing on the ground to tell you that you have crossed onto it, and the exposure there is the severest found in any state instrument read for this project – three times the value of what was removed, or three times the damage, or three times the cost to cure, whichever is greatest, plus a criminal scale that reaches a second degree felony above $5,000.

So the practical instruction for Utah is not "get a park permit". It is: establish which of the two land classes you are on before you start, because the authorising body and the consequences are different, and only one of the two announces itself.

Both instruments are set out in full below: the parks rule first, because it is the one people look for, then the trust-lands rule and its statute.

New Mexico is the parallel, and the two together establish the class

Added 8 Oct 2026. Utah was the first instance found and looked like a peculiarity. It is not.

The pair matters because the instruments are different shapes. Utah's rule names metal detecting, so a keyword search finds it. New Mexico's never mentions it – what New Mexico does is prohibit being on the land without a permit, which bites earlier and harder than any activity rule. A search for "metal detecting" finds Utah and misses New Mexico entirely, which is exactly how New Mexico's rule sat read-but-unrecorded on disk for three weeks.

So the question that finds this class is not "does the state have a detector rule for trust lands". It is "does the state have a trust-land class, and does being on it require permission?" That is the question the third sweep dimension asks.

Utah parks: R651-635-1, NOT the widely-cited R651-620-6

The commonly cited section is repealed. Third-party code mirrors still publish "R651-620-6. Metal Detecting" as live text, and Utah State Parks' own Echo State Park page states that "Utah Administrative Code R651-620-2 governs metal detecting in state parks."

Both are wrong. In the current code:

• R651-620-2 is "Trespass" – the agency miscited its own regulation
• R651-620-5 and R651-620-6 are both "[Repealed]" Read from the Utah Office of Administrative Rules, adminrules.utah.gov, the published HTML of R651-635 in full, 8 Oct 2026. Date of last change 25 April 2023; notice of continuation 25 June 2024; effective through 25 June 2029. Confirmed again 18 Oct 2026 from the same publisher's PDF, downloaded by Jason Smith and archived as utah-r651-635 with sha256 727cc2aa8bd39189; that PDF carries the same date of last change and notice of continuation, and its R651-635-1(2)(b) is word for word what is quoted below. Authorizing, and implemented or interpreted law: 79-2-402(4) and (5); 79-4-304; 79-2-402(6), (7) and (8). This entry was previously sourced from law.cornell.edu, a mirror, which METHODOLOGY rule 11 excludes – it was the last of the seven grandfathered entries. The conclusion it reached was right and is now confirmed from the official publisher. The live authority is R651-635-1, "Commercial Activities, Privileged, or Special Uses in Park Areas Require a Permit":

"(1) Except as provided in Section R651-635-6, no Commercial Activity, privileged, or Special Use may be conducted on division managed areas or property unless the division has provided a permit for that activity.
(2) Additionally, the following activities are prohibited without a permit:
(a) collecting or cutting of firewood; (b) metal detecting, magnet fishing, prospecting, digging, or excavating, or any other forms of treasure, paleontological, archaeological, or antiquities hunting; (c) the use or possession of explosives, fireworks or firecrackers; …"

Note the breadth of (b). It is not only the detector. Magnet fishing, prospecting, digging and excavating are each named, and then "any other forms of treasure, paleontological, archaeological, or antiquities hunting" catches whatever the list missed. There is no way to be outside this subsection while looking for buried objects in a Utah state park.

And the title of the rule gives no hint of any of it. "Commercial, Privileged, and Special Uses of Division Managed Park Areas" reads like a concessions rule. That is why the provision is hard to find, and why a reader searching the code for "metal detecting" finds it only by full-text search rather than by browsing titles.

The only no-permit exception is R651-635-6, and it is not for detectorists. A park manager may allow a Commercial Activity without a permit where it is requested by a visitor, lasts no more than three days, conflicts with no concession contract, and is one of: vehicle towing or wrecker services; automobile, boat, RV or OHV repair; taxi or ride share; emergency medical services; or food delivery. Nothing in it reaches recreational searching, so the permit in R651-635-1 is the only route.

Scope: "division managed areas or property" – the Division of State Parks.

A SECOND UTAH INSTRUMENT, and a large land class: trust lands

Found 8 Oct 2026 by full-text search of the current code for "metal detecting", which returned two rules rather than one. This directory had only the first.

Read from the Utah Office of Administrative Rules, adminrules.utah.gov, the published HTML of R850-12 in full, 8 Oct 2026. Date of last change 1 April 2021. Confirmed again 18 Oct 2026 from the same publisher's PDF, downloaded by Jason Smith and archived as utah-r850-12 with sha256 cdc2f30afadf7b42. That PDF adds a date the 8 Oct read did not capture: notice of continuation 24 March 2026, so the rule has been continued within the last eight months and is not a lapsed one that merely still appears in the code. Authorizing, and implemented or interpreted law: 53C-1-302(1); 53C-2-301(1).

R850-12-300, "Prohibited Activities": "In addition to Section 53C-2-301(1), except as authorized in writing by the agency, the following activities are prohibited on trust lands: … 6. using or possessing explosives, fireworks, or firecrackers; … 9. metal detecting;
10. searching for treasure, artifacts, or other natural or man-made items; …"

This is the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, not the Division of State Parks, and it is a separate land class covering millions of acres scattered across the state in a checkerboard pattern. A detectorist in Utah can be on trust land without any sign telling them so.

Two prohibitions, not one. Item 9 reaches the activity of detecting. Item 10 reaches searching for treasure or artifacts by any means. Both yield to written authorisation from the agency, which is the route, and the agency is SITLA rather than a park.

The statute behind the trust-lands rule, and it is the severest penalty in the directory

R850-12-300 says its prohibitions are "in addition to Section 53C-2-301(1)". So that section was read.

Read from the Utah Code at le.utah.gov, Title 53C Chapter 2 Part 3, section 301, 8 Oct 2026, on the render tier – see the routing note below.

53C-2-301, "Illegal activities on trust lands -- Penalties": "(1) A person is liable for the civil damages prescribed in Subsection (2) and is guilty of a criminal offense specified in Subsection (4) if the person intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly, and without written authorization from the director: (a) uses, commits waste, dumps refuse on, or occupies trust land…" "(2) A person who commits an act described in Subsection (1) is liable for damages in the amount of whichever of the following is greatest: (a) three times the value at the point of sale of the mineral or other resource removed, destroyed, or extracted; (b) three times the amount of damage committed; (c) three times the cost to cure the damage; … (e) three times the consideration which would have been charged by the director for use of the land during the period of trespass." "(4) A violation of this section is a: (a) second degree felony if the actor's conduct causes property injury or damage, or pecuniary loss equal to or in excess of $5,000 in value; (b) third degree felony … in excess of $1,500 but … less than $5,000; (c) class A misdemeanor … in excess of $500 but … less than $1,500; (d) class B misdemeanor … less than $500; and (e) an infraction…"

Treble damages and a graded criminal scale topping out at a second degree felony. That is the most severe exposure found in any state instrument read for this project, and it attaches to trust land, which is the land class a reader is least likely to know they are standing on.

Determination for trust lands: SITLA land. Does NOT reach municipal parks. Utah therefore answers two state rows and no municipal row.

Routing note: both Utah publishers work, and neither works plainly

Recorded because this entry was stuck for three weeks on the belief that Utah's rules could not be read.

adminrules.utah.gov is a React application with a public JSON API. The browse and rule paths return 404 to a plain request and the site renders nothing without JavaScript. The API does not need any of that:

The second parameter matters. searchRuleDataTotal/<term>/1 returns the empty agency skeleton; <term>/Current%20Rules returns the hits. A query that looks like it ran and found nothing is a query addressed to the wrong second argument – the same shape as Wyoming, where the search filters by agency rather than keyword and "Park" matched nothing.

le.utah.gov returns a 200 and 26,654 bytes containing 2,697 characters of navigation chrome and no statute. It is the Texas Angular-shell pattern exactly: a correct page title, a large byte count, and no content until rendered. render=true returns the section. A 200 and a large byte count are not a read – METHODOLOGY rule 5, now the third state where that specific misdiagnosis cost time.

No records request was needed. One went to rulesonline@utah.gov on 4 Oct 2026 with the Arkansas and Mississippi batch and has not been answered. It can be left to lapse: the question it asked is answered above, from the official publisher, and the follow-up drafted against it is not required.

Determination: Division of State Parks land only. Does NOT reach municipal parks. Special Use Permit required.

Worth carrying as a caution. An administering agency's own page miscited its own rule, and a third-party mirror served a repealed section as current. Agency pages are a better source than aggregators, but they are not infallible, and a code mirror can be stale. Where a citation matters, the current consolidated code is the thing to read.

Sources: Utah Office of Administrative Rules, adminrules.utah.gov, published HTML of R651-635 and R850-12 in full, read at source 8 Oct 2026; Utah Code 53C-2-301 from le.utah.gov on the render tier, 8 Oct 2026. The repealed-section and agency-miscitation findings were first made 19 Sep 2026 against law.cornell.edu and are confirmed above against the official publisher.

2. Cities in Utah that publish a rule

1 city in Utah publishes a rule we can quote, out of 64 checked.

Of the 64 checked, 24 had pages on the city’s own site that we found and read. For the other 40 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 Utah. That is not a finding that Utah’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; Utah was not one of them.

4. Cities checked - no published rule

63 cities in Utah were checked and have no published rule on this page. Of those, 63 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 63 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. Clubs in Utah

11 in our directory for Utah - 9 verified against their own website or group, 2 we could not verify. Verified means we opened the link and read it. All Utah clubs on the club directory, with meeting nights and contacts where we have them.

• Central Utah Prospectors - Facebook group · verified
• Metal Detecting Club Northern Utah - Facebook group · verified
• Northern Utah Prospector's Association (NUPA) FB Group - Facebook group · verified
• Utah Gold Prospecting Club - ugpc.org · West Valley City · verified
• Utah Gold Prospectors - Facebook group · verified
• Utah Metal Detecting - Facebook group · verified
• Utah Token Society - nationalutahtokensociety.org · verified
• Utah Treasure Hunters - Facebook group · verified
• Utah Treasure Hunting Tips - Facebook group · verified
• Trails West Artifact Society (TWAS) - Hooper · could not verify
• Utah Diggers - Saint George · could not verify

6. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for Utah 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.