Acres to Square Miles (ac to mi²)

1 acre equals 0.0015625 square miles exactly.

1 acre = 0.0015625 square miles

How to convert acres to square miles

To convert acres to square miles, multiply the number of acres by 0.0015625. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply square miles by 640.

square miles = acres × 0.0015625

Example: 10 acres = 0.015625 square miles.

About these units

Acre (ac)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

43,560 square feet or exactly 4,046.8564224 m², about 40% of a hectare. Originally the area a yoke of oxen could plow in a day.

Ploughland gave the acre its name: it traces to Old Norse akr, meaning cultivated land, and is related to German Acker and Latin ager. In medieval England it was a farming measure, the land one man with a team of eight oxen could plough in a day. The traditional strip was 40 perches long and 4 perches wide, which is 660 by 66 feet, or ten square chains. The shape was never the point, and the article on the unit stresses that any area of 43,560 square feet is an acre.

An acre is 43,560 square feet, 4,840 square yards or 1/640 of a square mile, close to 0.4 hectare. For Americans, it is roughly 88 by 55 yards, about 90 percent of a football field without the end zones. The Weights and Measures Act 1878 fixed it at 4,840 square yards in Britain, where trade use ended in 1995. The 1959 international acre is exactly 4,046.8564224 m²; the US survey acre, about 4,046.872 m², differed slightly, and US survey units were retired after 2022.

1 acre = 4,046.856422 square meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Acre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Square Mile (mi²)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

640 acres or about 2.59 km². Used for the area of cities, states and countries in the US and UK.

A thousand Roman paces, mille passus, became the mile, and under Elizabeth I Parliament fixed the statute mile at eight furlongs, or 5,280 feet, in place of the older Roman-based value. The square mile inherits that length. Its most famous use came in the United States: the Land Ordinance of 1785 started the Public Land Survey System so that western land could be surveyed and sold to pay war debts, beginning with the Seven Ranges in eastern Ohio.

In that system a section is roughly one square mile, or 640 acres, and a township is 36 sections in a square six miles on a side. One square mile is nearly 2.59 million square meters. Chicago's Midway International Airport, at about 650 acres, covers roughly 1.02 square miles. Beware the phrase mile square: a region 20 miles square has 400 square miles, but so does a rectangle 10 by 40 miles. The US survey version of the mile was retired from 1 January 2023, but the international square mile remains the unit for cities, states and countries in the US and UK.

1 square mile = 2,589,988.11 square meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Square mile; Wikipedia: Public Land Survey System; Wikipedia: Mile

Related conversions

See all area units.