PLL, regarding your bold letters "State" answer: Just curious, wouldn't you say this must also, by logic, apply to CA state-owned beaches too then? Afterall, they're within the state park's operated system too, right? Ie.: the same entity (state park's system) that oversees the in-land parks also oversees the state owned beaches. Ok then, why is detecting on state of CA beaches a common site? Why has no one ever cared? Barring a single brush or two (a state archie, for instance who tried to rough up a friend of mine on Seacliff State beach near Santa Cruz), detecting has simply gone on, for as long as there's been detectors, on state owned beaches here. Yup: in full view of rangers, etc.....
And I'll tell you something else: the same has been true of some state in-land parks too. There are just some that perhaps none of the rank-&-file in that particular place care, or perhaps they simply don't know the minutia of their own rules, so the matter simply hasn't crossed their mind, etc....
As for wandering the desert along the Anza trail, I personally think this would be an exercise in futility anyhow. You'd have to know where long-term recurring camp-spots were, for multiple years, with multiple persons, over long periods. Not just simply a walk route that persons used. They tend to loose things where they remained for long periods, slept, ate, played, etc..... To illistrate this, why is it that people find things at stage
stops, but don't necessarily detect along stage
routes? Because of course the stops were where they got out to spend their money, ate, slept, dilly-dallied around, etc... And when you wander off down the road from the stage stop (in cases where you know exactly where the old roads were aligned, and assuming they're still dirt roads), you will find that your targets immediately dry up, and the landscape goes "sterile". Oh sure, if you wandered it enough years, you *might* find a lone coin drop or toe tap or something. But basically, you're better off to hunt where the stops were, not just randomly along a trail or road.
But if someone did fancy themselves to want to hike the original Anza trail through the desert (assuming you could know exactly where it is), I highly doubt anyone's going to have a problem out there in the middle of nowhere, no matter if it's fed, state, county, or city land. I mean, heck, have you ever been out there?? I have been down in the Imperial Valley to Palm Spring route many times (ie.: the red line shown on the satellite map here), and trust me: there's no one out there in the boonies to care less. If it were me, and I had researched something out there in the desert, I certainly wouldn't hesitate to go out and hunt it. But like all public places ....... no matter how innocuous (city sandboxes, etc...): if you ask enough deskbound bureaucrats, of COURSE you can always net yourself a "no" by using the right combination of key words ("holes" "cultural artifacts" "treasure", etc...). I mean .... c'mon!
