The only note I would add to revier's post, is to take into consideration the source of the material he gives, for the "ask at each park kiosk" type answer he has, for that state. The source for this info. comes the same way. Various people over the years have attempted to make a compendium for all the 50 state's park's depts. For example, a book came out decades ago, called "Treasure laws of the United States". It attempted to do this very thing, to make an alphabetic listing of all 50 states, saying what each one's state park's dept. policy was. And when the author set about to do it, he did the obvious thing, to GET the information: He asked! He simply sent off 50 xeroxed copies of a form letter, sent to the state capitol of each state, to whatever desk-bound bureaucrat was in charge of answering for the state's park's dept. The letter said something to the effect of "what is your laws regarding the use of metal detectors in your state's parks?"
The idea of the book, was to compile all the 50 replies he received, put them in book form (with the exact letter-head reply from each state re-printed in the book), and then sell the book to md'rs. Sounds noble enough, eh? Then if you're a RV traveller, presto, you just carry the book from state to state, and it removes any guessing. Or if you get hassled by someone, you can merely show them the exact reply from their own state capitol. Who could have a problem with an idea like this, right? I mean, who better to ask, than the state's themselves, right? How sweet.
But here's where the problems started: A lot of the letters the fellow received back, to his inquiries, spelled dire things, or outright no's. Or a common answer was like the one you're getting now: "Inquire at each park you come to", blah blah blah. But interestingly, some of these dire sounding things were coming in from states that ..... quite frankly ..... had never had a problem before. That is to say, the state parks had just been routinely detected, and no one had ever had a problem before (nor would anyone have know they needed to "ask", in the first place, as they had just never been a problem). So now you have old-timers seeing a book like this, asking themselves "since when?".
You see the psychology at play here? You obviously have some desk-bound bureaucrat getting a letter like this, who ........... must pass it by their legal depts, a myriad of various type parks within their system, etc.... Ie.: most parks would obviously be innocuous, non-historically themed, regular beaches, etc.... Ie.: no one would care. However, admittedly, within each state, there is bound to be a few that are sensitive historic monuments. So put yourself in the shoes of the person answering this. What's going to be the easy answer?? "No", right? Or "inquire at each one you come to", and so forth. So sure enough, lists like this, with answers like that, send lots of people scurrying to ask at each kiosk. Then the snowball effect goes further: rangers and kiosk workers get this repeated questions, call their superiors and offices, and more and more "no's" come out as the "safe answer". See the vicious circle?
CA also has wording like that (ask at each park). Yet I can tell you for a fact that we have lots of state parks where you can detect till you're blue in the face, and no one will care (and no, no one "asks", and no, no one "gets arrested"
).
So ..... for this reason, I don't put a lot of stock in those lists. If you just stay clear of obvious historic sensitive monuments, is the only rule of thumb I would use.
