Oxgangs to Square Miles (oxgang to mi²)
1 oxgang equals 0.0234375 square miles exactly.
How to convert oxgangs to square miles
To convert oxgangs to square miles, multiply the number of oxgangs by 0.0234375. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply square miles by 42.66666667 (rounded).
square miles = oxgangs × 0.0234375
Example: 10 oxgangs = 0.234375 square miles.
Approximate value. Standards for the oxgang varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.
About these units
Oxgang (oxgang)
About 15 acres, an eighth of a hide: the area an ox could plow in a season. Actual sizes varied by region.
Oxgang means the land an ox could go over, from Old English oxangang. Its Latin twin, bovata or bovate, comes from the word for ox, and a peasant holding one was called an oxganger or bovater. The unit belonged mainly to the Danelaw, the part of England settled by Vikings, where Domesday Book records it in Latin as bovata.
Eight oxgangs made a carucate, the ploughland of a full eight-ox team, so two oxgangs equalled a virgate. Wikipedia gives an English average of about 15 acres, and says elsewhere that it could be as little as 15 and averaged roughly 20, depending on soil and local custom. The figure used here is 15 acres, close to 60,700 square meters.
Scotland kept a parallel system in which eight oxgangs formed a ploughgate. The word survives in place names such as Oxgangs, a suburb of Edinburgh, and Oxgang in Kirkintilloch.
1 oxgang = 60,702.84634 square meters (approximately).
Sources: Wikipedia: Oxgang; Wikipedia: Carucate; Domesday Book Online: Glossary
Square Mile (mi²)
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
- Square miles to oxgangs (reverse)
- Oxgangs to square meters
- Oxgangs to square kilometers
- Oxgangs to hectares
- Oxgangs to square inches
- Oxgangs to square feet
- Oxgangs to square yards
- Oxgangs to acres
- Square meters to square miles
- Square kilometers to square miles
- Hectares to square miles
- Square inches to square miles
- Square feet to square miles
- Square yards to square miles
- Acres to square miles
- Square centimeters to square miles
- Square millimeters to square miles
- Tsubo to square miles
- Pyeong to square miles
- Rai (Thai) to square miles
See all area units.