Coordinates to state

How to type the coordinates

Latitude first, then longitude: “40.76078, -111.89105” (the example, the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City). Every point in the 50 states except a sliver of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands has a negative longitude, because it’s west of Greenwich.

You don’t have to convert anything first. The box also reads degrees, minutes and seconds (40° 45′ 39″ N, 111° 53′ 28″ W), UTM with its zone (12T 424791 4512584 is the same capitol), MGRS, Plus Codes and Google Maps links.

Coordinates we checked

Here’s what TIGERweb, the Census boundary service the tool uses, returned for some well-known points on October 31, 2026:

The center of the lower 48 is unincorporated farmland near Lebanon, Kansas; Mount Whitney, Mauna Kea and Denali aren’t in any city either.

Common mistakes

• A missing minus sign. 40.76078, 111.89105 is east of Greenwich instead of west, and lands in China, in Inner Mongolia.
• Latitude and longitude swapped. If the first number can’t be a latitude (like -111.89105), the tool flips them and tells you so.
• Minutes typed as decimals. 40° 45′ is 40.75, not 40.45: mixing them up moves the point about 20 miles north or south.
• Too few decimals. Two decimals are only good to about half a mile, which is plenty for a state but not near a line. Five decimals pin a spot to about 4 feet.

What you get

The state and its two-letter abbreviation, the county with its FIPS code, the city or census-designated place (or “Unincorporated area”), the ZIP code area and the nearest address. All boundaries are the Census Bureau’s official TIGER data, and the state is drawn on the map.

Outside the US you’ll get the state, province or region from OpenStreetMap, and in Spain the autonomous community from the official IGN boundaries.

What people use it for

Working out which state a geotagged photo was taken in, or where a pin someone texted you really is. Filling in the state and county for points collected in the field, from trail cameras to survey stakes. Checking which state’s hunting or fishing license you need at a spot near a line, or which state a campsite or trailhead on a road-trip plan is in. And double-checking coordinates from a GPS, a deed or a drone log before you send them to someone else.

When there’s no state

Not every coordinate is in a state. Out at sea, like 39.5, -73.6 off New Jersey, the tool says you’re at sea. Coordinates on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, such as 43.0828, -79.0742, come back as Canada. And D.C. and Puerto Rico appear as state equivalents, the way the Census treats them.

Water inside the country does belong to a state. The Great Lakes are divided between the states around them (47.5, -87.5, in Lake Superior, is Michigan), and the Statue of Liberty, at 40.6892, -74.0445, is in New York County even though New Jersey surrounds Liberty Island on the water.