Florida

Yes, on private land with the landowner’s written permission. That is the clearest legal route in Florida, and it is the only thing we do.

Federal land is closed. Access to state land is decided by Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Recreation and Parks and the rules are not the same at every property. Private ground, with the owner’s written agreement, avoids all of it.

On federal land, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 makes it an offence to disturb or remove archaeological resources over 100 years old without a permit. The National Park Service prohibits metal detecting outright in national parks.

The Division of Recreation and Parks sets the rules for Florida state parks. Separately, the state controls archaeological and historical resources on all state owned land, including submerged land, through the Division of Historical Resources. Both matter, and both apply before you search anything that is not private ground.

We do not publish a summary of individual park rules, because they change and they differ site by site. The authority above is the one that decides, and they will answer directly.

Public land is complicated. Private land with written permission is not.

Ask the landowner and get it in writing, or book ground where the permission already exists. Knowing where to look is only half of it. The right to be standing there is the half that decides whether the day is detecting or trespass.

1. Identify the ground. Old maps, cellar holes, vanished settlements and terrain will all point you at likely land in Florida. None of that grants access to it.
2. Find who owns it. County parcel records name the owner. Knocking on the door still works, and still fails most of the time.
3. Get the agreement in writing. Who may search, which fields, on what dates, what happens to anything found, and who carries the liability.
4. Or skip to the end. Every FieldFinders listing in Florida is land whose owner has already agreed, set their own rate, and approves each request by name. The written search agreement comes with the booking.

Florida is the oldest European ground in the United States. St Augustine was founded in 1565, forty two years before Jamestown, and Spain held the peninsula for most of the two and a half centuries that followed. Offshore, the treasure fleets of 1715 and 1733 went down on the east coast in hurricanes and are still coming ashore after storms. Inland the story is Seminole wars, cattle, citrus, and a state that filled up late and then very fast.

1. 1565St Augustine, the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the country
2. 1700sSpanish missions and ranches, and the treasure fleets offshore
3. 1763 to 1783British Florida
4. 1817 to 1858The Seminole wars, the forts and the military trails

Sand, very nearly everywhere, which is fast to dig and forgiving to work. Salt on both coasts is severe on iron and hard on anything ferrous near the tide line. Central Florida is sandy over limestone, which can throw a detector on mineralised patches.

Spanish colonial silver and copper, cob coinage along the treasure coast, military buttons and hardware around the Seminole war fort sites, and modern beach material anywhere the tourists have been.