I read about some national forest in another state where they got permission to detect a ghost town area, but they were asked to draw a map of the area for them. Then they made at least that area off limits & raided the house of one of them & took a bunch of things found detecting.
Many of our govt people like to say they are the one in charge & then someone else claims they are the one & they never give anyone permission. There was an article in the paper once about "our" (Minnesota) State Forests having a $500 fine for detecting them because any land could be Indian land.
National Parks person once said 8 years in prison for having an assembled metal detector inside a vehicle in a national park. No need to find something or dig or even sweep detector, it would be intent to steal relics.
When I called MN State Parks to ask why I couldn't detect about half didn't know it was illegal, so maybe if I'd asked someone if I could they'd say yes, but then I'd probably get fined.
As for their other employees, the roughly half that knew it was illegal, everyone gave me a different reason. Finally I speak to archaeologist & he says "if you dug up a ghost town, then I couldn't tell its story".
At a National Park, some person(s) dug up 6 Cival War bullets, commercial value $3, but said to have an "archaeological value" of $18,000! Wonder if that's how much the archaeologist would have been paid to dig them up if they drew on map how deep & at what square inch? The relic hunters were forced to buy big ads in newspapers saying turn in looters of national treasures.
Some people got permission to sweep detector but not take anything or only surface finds or things less than 50 years old or whatever. I don't know if you had any restrictions mentioned to you or what would happen if you ran into a different forest ranger or a professional archaeologist, Best wishes, George (MN)
