Charles Nordhoff (1830-1901) was an American journalist, descriptive and miscellaneous writer. He was born in Erwitte, Germany (Prussia) in 1830, and emigrated to the USA in 1845.

He was educated in Cincinnati and was for nine years at sea, in the navy and merchant service; from 1853 to 1857 in various newspaper offices; was then employed editorially by the Harpers (1861), and for the next ten years on the staff of the New York Evening Post. From 1871 to 1873 Nordhoff traveled in California and visited Hawaii.  He then became Washington correspondent of the New York Herald.  His most widely known books are Communistic Societies of The United States, and California for Health, Pleasure and Residence. He died in California in July, 1901.

He was the father of Walter Nordhoff, author of The Journey of the Flame penned under the name "Antonio de Fierro Blanco".  His grandson was Charles Bernard Nordhoff, co-author of Mutiny on the Bounty.

Nordhoff Street in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles is named in his honor.

Works

• Man-of-War Life, largely autobiographical (1855)
• The Merchant Vessel (1855)
• Whaling and Fishing (1856; new edition, 1903)
• Nine Years as a Sailor (1857)
• Secession Is Rebellion (1860)
• The Freedmen of South Carolina (1863)
• America for the Working Men (1865)
• California: For Health, Pleasure, and Residence (1873)
• Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands (1874)
• Politics for Young Americans (1875)
• The Communistic Societies of the United States (1875)
• The Cotton States in the Spring and Summer of 1875 (1876)
• God and the Future Life (1881)
• Peninsular California (1888)

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