50 Mile Radius Map

What fits inside a 50-mile radius?

A 50-mile radius draws a circle 100 miles wide with a circumference of about 314 miles. It encloses roughly 7,854 square miles (20,342 km²), about the land area of Massachusetts. Doubling the radius from 25 to 50 miles quadruples the area, which is why a 50-mile circle so often swallows an entire metropolitan region plus its exurbs, satellite cities and a band of countryside.

The map above starts with a 50-mile circle around the Chicago Loop. On the Illinois side it reaches past Aurora, Joliet and Elgin; to the east it crosses Lake Michigan's shoreline into northwest Indiana; to the north it crosses the Wisconsin state line near Kenosha. A large part of the circle is open water, which is typical for lakeside and coastal cities and worth remembering when you read the area figure.

How to make a 50-mile radius map

1. Choose the center. Search an address or city, click the map, or press Use Current Location to draw “50 miles from me”.
2. Confirm the radius. It is preset to 50 miles. Switch to kilometers for an 80 km circle, or type a custom value.
3. Read and share. The headline gives the enclosed area and the copy button puts the summary on your clipboard. Use your browser's screenshot tool to save the map image.

The circle is computed on the WGS84 ellipsoid, the same model GPS uses, so the edge is a true 50 miles from the center in every direction. On a Web Mercator map the circle can look slightly taller than wide at northern latitudes; that is the projection, not the circle. Need a smaller or larger ring? There are dedicated pages for a 25-mile radius and a 100-mile radius, and the radius map tool accepts any distance.

Driving time for 50 miles

Fifty straight-line miles usually becomes 60 to 70 miles on the road. On an open interstate at 65–70 mph that is a drive of about an hour to an hour and a quarter, which is why “within 50 miles” and “within an hour” are often used interchangeably. The equivalence breaks down in two places:

• Big-city traffic. Fifty miles across greater Los Angeles, the Bay Area or the New York region regularly takes two hours at peak times.
• Mountains and water. A town 50 miles away across a mountain range or a bay may be 90 road miles away. The circle cannot see that.

For a time-based boundary, compare this circle with a drive-time map. The difference between the two shapes shows where roads help and where they hurt.

Cities roughly 50 miles apart

Straight-line distances between city centers, to calibrate your sense of the radius:

Center the circle on Cincinnati and Dayton sits just inside the edge; center it on Denver and Fort Collins falls just outside. Measure any other pair with the distance calculator.

Who uses a 50-mile radius, and why

Commuters and home buyers

Fifty miles is roughly the outer limit of a daily car commute in most US metros. Relocating employees often draw a 50-mile circle around a new office to see every town that is realistically in play, then narrow it down with drive times, school districts and prices. Pair the circle with the cities within a radius list to get the candidate towns as text.

Non-compete and non-solicitation clauses

Employment and sale-of-business agreements sometimes bar competing within a stated number of miles, and 50 miles is a common figure. A map makes the practical reach of such a clause obvious. Note that enforceability depends on state law (California, for example, voids most employee non-competes), the contract may define how the distance is measured, and this map is not legal advice.

Franchise territories and sales regions

Franchise agreements and dealer contracts describe protected territories by radius. Laying 50-mile circles around several locations shows overlaps and gaps immediately. For a batch of addresses, plot them all at once with the multiple-address map.

Moving-expense distance test

The IRS moving-expense deduction uses a 50-mile distance test: the new job must be at least 50 miles farther from the old home than the old job was. Since 2018 the deduction is available only to active-duty military moving under orders, but employers still use the same 50-mile rule of thumb in relocation policies.

Events, recruiting and outreach

Wedding planners, conference organizers and university recruiters use a 50-mile ring to separate guests who can drive in for the day from those who need a hotel, and to decide which high schools or alumni chapters to invite.

50 miles in perspective

Fifty miles is about 0.72 degrees of latitude, since one degree of latitude spans roughly 69 miles everywhere on Earth. East–west it is more degrees the farther north you go: about 0.87 degrees of longitude in Atlanta, 0.97 in Chicago and 1.07 in Seattle, because meridians converge toward the pole. That is also why a radius cannot be drawn as a simple box of degrees.

Compared with US counties, which average roughly 1,100 square miles of land, a 50-mile circle is the size of about seven average counties. In New England or the Southeast it can touch twenty or more; in Nevada or Arizona it may sit inside one or two. On foot, 50 miles is a two-day hike for a fit walker; by bicycle it is a solid half-day ride of three to four hours; by car it is about an hour on the interstate.

Checking whether a place is within 50 miles

• One place: measure it with the distance calculator. Fifty miles or less in a straight line means it is inside the circle.
• Many places: list them with the cities in a radius tool, or geocode your own address list on the multiple-address map and check which pins fall inside.
• Two ZIP codes: the ZIP code distance calculator measures center to center, which is how most “within 50 miles of ZIP code” searches on websites work.

Whatever method you use, write down the exact center point. A rule such as “within 50 miles of our office” can include or exclude a whole suburb depending on which entrance, parcel corner or city hall you measure from.

ZIP codes within 50 miles

A 50-mile circle contains anywhere from a handful of ZIP codes in the rural West to more than 850 around New York City. The counts below use the center point of each 2020 Census ZIP Code Tabulation Area; a ZIP that straddles the edge is counted only if its center is inside.

Generate the full list for your own address, sorted by distance and downloadable as CSV, with the find ZIP codes in a radius tool set to 50 miles. To color the resulting ZIP codes on a map or estimate how many people live inside, follow up with the population within a radius calculator.

Caveats before you rely on a 50-mile circle

At 50 miles a circle starts to cross state lines, time zone lines and media markets. Check whether the rule you are applying cares about those boundaries: an advertising license, a delivery permit or a professional license may stop at the state line even though the circle does not.