[1] The first editorial statement, in the first issue, was The Californian will be thoroughly Western in character, local to this coast in its flavor, representative and vigorous in its style and method of dealing with questions, and edited for popular rather than for a severely literary constituency.
[1]Contributors included Joaquin Miller, Edward Rowland Sill, Ambrose Bierce, John Muir, Josiah Royce, Joseph LeConte, Charles Edwin Markham Yda Hillis Addis, Katharine Lee Bates, Kate Douglas Wiggin and Ina Coolbrith.
In California, the San Francisco Bulletin said the new magazine was "a serial which more and more proves its claim to be no unworthy successor of The Overland..."[3] The Oakland Tribune wrote that "[i]t is a capital magazine, creditable to its editor and contributors, and a proud monument to the originality and culture of the Pacific Coast.
The Daily Hawkeye in Burlington, Iowa noted that "the articles it contains are fully equal to those in the Eastern periodicals.
[3] In Philadelphia, the Chronicle-Herald noticed that "many of the contributors are women, some of whom write with much grace and force.