Stuart Wilkinson

Stuart got into metal detecting the way most people do — he found a beat-up Garrett at a yard sale, dug his first coin in his backyard, and that was it. For the first couple of years he mostly stuck to private land where he had permission. Then he started hitting the beaches.

The Space Coast beaches were mostly fine. But one afternoon at a Brevard County park, a ranger walked up and told him he was in violation of Sec. 78-120 of the county code — a flat ban on excavation in county parks, which extends to the kind of shallow plug-cutting most detectorists do without thinking twice. Stuart hadn't been warned by the ranger at the entrance. He hadn't seen a sign. He just didn't know, and neither did anyone in his local Facebook detecting group when he asked afterward.

That incident turned into a habit. He started pulling the actual ordinances — not forum posts, not detecting blogs, the original county code and park district rules — and building a personal reference for which Brevard beaches and parks were actually clean to detect, which required a permit, and which were off-limits regardless of what other people claimed online.

Over a few years of doing this across Brevard, Indian River, and St. Lucie counties, he became the person his local group called when they weren't sure about a spot. He started publishing those notes here so others wouldn't have to start from zero.

His research process: find the managing agency, locate the governing ordinance or land-use rules, read the original text, and note the specific section. He does not treat forum consensus as a source.