Arpent (from Old French, ultimately from Gaulish arepennis) is a pre-metric French unit of both length and area, historically used in land surveying throughout France and its North American colonies, including Quebec, Louisiana, and the Mississippi and Missouri river valleys. In the form most widely used in North America, the arpent de Paris, the linear arpent equals 180 French feet (pieds du roi), about 58.47 meters or roughly 191.8 English feet, while the square arpent covers 32,400 square French feet, about 3,419 square meters or roughly 0.845 English acres. The unit is closely tied to the French “long-lot” or ribbon-farm system of land division, in which parcels were laid out as narrow strips running back from a river or road, so property dimensions were typically recorded as a frontage in arpents by a depth in arpents (for example, “2 arpents front by 40 arpents deep”).
Because the measure’s value varied by region and period in France, surveyors interpreting historical deeds must determine which arpent was intended. The term still appears in property descriptions, land records, and legal disputes in Louisiana, Quebec, and parts of the American Midwest, where colonial-era boundaries remain in use.
Arpent
