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

1 US survey mile equals 5,280.01056 feet (rounded).

1 US survey mile = 5,280.01056 feet

How to convert US survey miles to feet

To convert US survey miles to feet, multiply the number of US survey miles by 5,280.01056. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply feet by 0.0001893935606 (rounded).

feet = US survey miles × 5,280.01056

Example: 10 US survey miles = 52,800.1056 feet.

About these units

US Survey Mile (mi (US))

US land surveyHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

5,280 US survey feet (about 1,609.347 m). Slightly longer than the international mile, used in US land surveys until 2022.

Because it is built from 5,280 survey feet, this mile inherits the survey foot's tiny excess and comes to about 1,609.347 m, against exactly 1,609.344 m for the international mile. The gap is under 1/8 inch, or 3.2 mm, per mile, and one international mile equals 0.999998 survey miles. In US law the formal statute mile was the survey mile, though everyday usage treats the two as the same.

Over a single trip the difference vanishes, but State Plane Coordinate Systems can stretch across hundreds of miles, where a few millimetres per mile accumulate into something a surveyor must account for. For that reason surveyors kept the survey mile long after the international foot took over elsewhere. In October 2019 the National Geodetic Survey and NIST announced that the survey foot and mile would be retired from 1 January 2023, and NIST says the unit now survives only for historic and legacy data. Maps and deeds written before then still use it.

1 US survey mile = 1,609.347219 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Mile; NIST: U.S. survey foot

Foot (ft)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

12 inches. Defined as exactly 0.3048 meters. Still the standard unit for height, altitude in aviation and room dimensions in the US and UK.

Human anatomy supplied the idea: an adult foot is roughly 15 percent of body height. Ancient cultures turned that into standards, but not the same one. The Greek pous was about 302 mm, the standard Roman pes about 295.7 mm, and a Harappan foot of about 335 mm has been reported from the Indus Valley. Historically, a foot fell somewhere between about 250 and 335 mm. Charlemagne tried to standardize units around 790 with little lasting success, and in 1593 English law fixed the statute mile at 5,280 feet.

The modern foot dates from the 1959 International Yard and Pound Agreement, which defined the yard as exactly 0.9144 meter and so the foot as exactly 0.3048 meter; the UK adopted it on 1 January 1964. The US survey foot, defined in 1893 as 1200/3937 meter, was deprecated on 31 December 2022. Feet remain in everyday use for height and rooms in the US, and ISO shipping containers are defined in them. Aviation altitudes use them too: flight level 330 means 33,000 feet.

1 foot = 0.3048 meters (exactly).

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

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