New York

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

Federal land is closed. Access to state land is decided by New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation 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.

State parks and historic sites are governed by the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, while the Forest Preserve and state forests sit with the Department of Environmental Conservation under different rules again. Two systems, two positions, and neither is uniform across its own properties.

We do not publish a summary of individual park rules, because they change and they differ site by site.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 New York. 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 New York 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.

New York holds the deepest and most varied ground on the East Coast. The Dutch were on the Hudson from 1624, and the colony spent the next century and a half as a contested frontier, first in the French and Indian War and then through the Revolution, where more engagements were fought in New York than in any other state. Then came the Erie Canal, which turned upstate villages into boom towns inside a decade and left canal camps, taverns and warehouse landings the length of the Mohawk valley.

1. 1624Dutch settlement on the Hudson, trade posts and patroon farms
2. 1750sFrench and Indian War, forts and campaign routes through the corridor
3. 1775 onwardThe Revolution, Saratoga, and the fight for the Hudson
4. 1825 onwardThe Erie Canal, and the towns that grew on the back of it

Enormously varied. Glacial till in the north and the Adirondack fringe, deep workable loam through the Mohawk and Genesee valleys, heavier clay toward the lakes. Upstate farmland is some of the most productive detecting soil in the country, ploughed for two hundred years and still turning material up. Iron survives better here than in New England because the soil is less acidic.

Colonial coppers and Spanish silver on the older farms, Dutch and British buttons in the Hudson valley, canal era tokens and coinage along the Mohawk, military buttons and camp material near encampment ground, and the usual weight of farm hardware wherever a barn stood.