Miles to US Survey Feet (mi to ft (US))

1 mile equals 5,279.98944 US survey feet exactly.

1 mile = 5,279.98944 US survey feet

How to convert miles to US survey feet

To convert miles to US survey feet, multiply the number of miles by 5,279.98944. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply US survey feet by 0.0001893943182 (rounded).

US survey feet = miles × 5,279.98944

Example: 10 miles = 52,799.8944 US survey feet.

About these units

Mile (mi)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

5,280 feet or 1,760 yards, exactly 1,609.344 meters. This is the statute (international) mile used on US and UK roads.

A thousand paces gave the mile its name. It descends from the Latin mille passus, the Roman mile, by way of Old English mil and Middle English myle. For centuries after Rome, miles of many lengths coexisted; a sixteenth-century Mercator map, for example, shows small, medium and large Flemish miles on a single scale bar. The English statute mile was fixed by an Act of Parliament under Elizabeth I in 1593, which declared that a mile contains eight furlongs, or 5,280 feet.

The 1959 international yard and pound agreement made that mile exactly 1,609.344 meters. A slightly longer US survey mile, about 1,609.347 meters, lingered in American land surveys and was slated for retirement from 1 January 2023. Today the mile is the road unit of the United Kingdom, the United States, Liberia and Myanmar, along with several territories such as the Bahamas, Belize, Guam and the US Virgin Islands. In Canada it survives chiefly in rail transport and horse racing.

1 mile = 1,609.344 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Mile; Wikipedia: Foot (unit); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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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