Kilometers to US Survey Feet (km to ft (US))

1 kilometer equals 3,280.833333 US survey feet (rounded).

1 kilometer = 3,280.833333 US survey feet

How to convert kilometers to US survey feet

To convert kilometers to US survey feet, multiply the number of kilometers by 3,280.833333. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply US survey feet by 0.0003048006096 (rounded).

US survey feet = kilometers × 3,280.833333

Example: 10 kilometers = 32,808.33333 US survey feet.

About these units

Kilometer (km)

Metric (SI)Current unit

1,000 meters. The standard unit for road distances in most countries.

A name for 1,000 meters took a while to settle. In 1793 France's National Convention made the metre the sole French unit of length, and the first proposed name for the thousand-metre multiple was millaire. Everyday French usage then leaned on the myriametre, 10,000 meters, well into the 1800s. The Netherlands adopted the kilometre in 1817, under the local name mijl, and made it the only official unit of that size in 1867. In 1935 the CIPM dropped the myria- prefix, which left the kilometre as the standard unit for road-scale distances.

Kilo- is the SI prefix for a thousand, and the kilometre is now the preferred unit for land distances in most of the world, with the United States, the United Kingdom and Liberia among those that still use the mile. One kilometre is about 0.621 mile. The main span of Lisbon's 25 de Abril Bridge, at 1.013 km, gives a sense of the scale. Even its pronunciation has been argued over: in 1970 Australia's Metric Conversion Board made stress on the first syllable official, although Prime Minister Gough Whitlam argued for stress on the second. Military slang in several countries calls it a klick.

1 kilometer = 1,000 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kilometre; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; BIPM: history of the metre

US Survey Foot (ft (US))

US land surveyHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

Exactly 1200/3937 meters, about 2 parts per million longer than the international foot. Retired in the US at the end of 2022 but still found in older land records.

Two feet coexisted in the United States for sixty-three years. The Mendenhall Order of 1893 tied American units to the metre at 39.37 inches to the metre, which makes the survey foot exactly 1200/3937 m, about 0.3048006 m. In 1959 the international foot was set at exactly 0.3048 m for industry and trade, but the older foot was kept for geodetic work until control networks could be readjusted. That readjustment was finished in 1986, yet the survey foot stayed in use.

The two differ by about 2 parts per million. That is trivial for a house lot but adds up in the State Plane Coordinate System, where coordinates can lie hundreds of thousands of feet from their origin. NIST and the National Geodetic Survey announced that the survey foot should not be used after December 31, 2022, with the international foot replacing it, leaving it for historic and legacy data. Before that, state laws varied: about 40 of 56 jurisdictions based surveying on the survey foot, six on the international foot, and ten did not specify.

1 US survey foot = 0.3048006096 meters (approximately).

Sources: NIST: U.S. survey foot; Wikipedia: Foot (unit)

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