Charles Russell Orcutt Resources:

West American Scientist

In December 1884, Charles Russell Orcutt, at age twenty, published the first issue of his monthly periodical, The West-American Scientist, “A popular review and record for the Pacific Coast,” which was in print until 1921. In 1915, Frank L. Burns wrote of the periodical (which was still in print at the time):

The original title was The West-American Scientist, but the hyphen [along with the article] was discarded after the fifth, and a cover assumed by the seventh number. With the exception of volume six, 1889, which was published by Carson & Co., San Francisco, C.R. Orcutt was both editor and publisher. No title page and index appears with the succeeding volumes. In completing a file, one discovers a number of typographical errors on dating and enumeration, not all numbers have covers, and the stock is apt to be inferior... This irregularly appearing little journal has outlived the great majority, and is a monument to the industry and perseverance of Proprietor C.R. Orcutt, the editor and chief contributor along botanical lines. I am uninformed in respect to the circulation, but there are a number of life subscribers, and it will doubtless be continued by the publishers.

N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual published in Philadelphia offered Charles’ reported circulation for the following years: 1888: 1,400; 1889: 1,000; 1893: 750; 1895: 500; 1901: 350; 1906: 350; 1910: 350; 1915: 1,000; 1920: 1,000. West American Scientist was at its zenith in 1885 through 1887, but after then it declined. Some later issues had only one article with the remainder of the contents being advertisements. In two issues, the single article was in German. The journal was at its nadir with the April 1918 issue, which consisted four pages of advertisements for Charles’ enterprises and no articles at all. The columns rather than pages were numbered, giving the illusion of its being eight pages long. It was the first issue of volume 22, published three years after the previous issue, which was in volume 20, and nearly a year before the first issue of volume 21. But even with its shortcomings, in 1954 Dr. Laurence C. Stuart wrote:

This is or was a well-known publication and hardly needs further annotation. It received contributions from such well-known scientists as Cockerell, Stejneger, and Eigenmann. A number of new species of animals were described here for the first time, and many of the contributions appearing in the Scientist were original and of definite scientific value.

West American Scientist Volume 1 Number 1 (Dec 1884) through Volume 4 Number 38 (Jun 1888), 732 pp. including index to vol. 1-4 (complete).

West American Scientist Volume 5 Number 39 (Sep 1888) through Volume 8 Number 77 (Nov 1894), 763 pp. (complete).

West American Scientist Volume 9 Number 78 (Jun 1895) through Volume 12 Number 115 (Jul 1902), 356 pp. (complete).

West American Scientist Volume 13 Number 116 (Aug 1902) through Volume 21 Number 178 (1919); to Volume 19 Number 3 (15 Jun 1921), 646 pp. with stray pages at the end. Incomplete: missing 22(159): 1-2? (May 1918), never issued.

This website is maintained by Larry Orcutt. I can be contacted by e-mail at Victory followed by the Roman numeral 4, no space and all lower case, at earthlink, which is not a dot com, but rather a dot net. Apologies for my indirectness, but it is necessary in order to avoid robots trolling for e-mail addresses.