Editorial standard

Accuracy before coverage

A smaller set of scoped, sourced, reviewable records is more useful than a large directory built from assumptions.

Official sources support conclusions

Legal-status claims must trace to federal, state, county, municipal, park-system, or other official land-manager material. Community and commercial sources are not cited as evidence.

Silence does not equal permission

If research does not locate a rule, the record says that the evidence is incomplete. It does not convert the gap into an allowed status.

Scope is part of the answer

A statewide rule does not automatically answer a city-park question, and a designated-beach rule does not apply to an entire park. Each summary states the territory and circumstances the cited source actually governs.

Original summaries, visible sources

Rule language is paraphrased in concise original wording rather than copied at length. Visitors can see the publisher, source title, official URL, evidence summary, and exact check date.

Unknown facts remain unknown

The site does not invent fees, permit duration, contacts, coordinates, boundaries, prohibited areas, or exceptions. Missing, ambiguous, old, or conflicting facts are shown as uncertainty and assigned for manual confirmation.

Human review controls indexing

Automated or machine-assisted research can prepare a draft but cannot approve it. Pending records are noindex and omitted from the XML sitemap. Approval records who checked the sources and when.

Sensitive places are protected

The site does not expose archaeological coordinates, burial locations, tribal cultural sites, protected historic deposits, or other sensitive locations. It never encourages detecting or collecting in those places.

Corrections preserve history

Substantive rule updates append a dated revision entry. A mistaken update is rolled back in version control, the public summary is corrected, and the reason remains documented.