A square mile contains 640 acres. This measurement comes from the fact that a mile is defined as 5,280 feet and a square mile is calculated by squaring that distance.
To understand it better, consider that 1 square mile is a square that is 1 mile long on each side. If you convert miles to feet, you get:
- 1 mile = 5,280 feet
- So, the area of a square mile is (5,280 feet) x (5,280 feet) = 27,878,400 square feet.
Now, if you want to convert square feet to acres, you should know that 1 acre is equal to 43,560 square feet. Therefore, to find out how many acres are in a square mile, you divide the total square feet in a square mile by the number of square feet in an acre:
- 27,878,400 square feet ÷ 43,560 square feet/acre = 640 acres.
This simple calculation helps illustrate why there are 640 acres in a square mile.