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U.S. Acres

comic strip by Jim Davis

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ583673
Source-derived summary

U.S. Acres (also known as Orson's Farm internationally and Orson's Place in Canada) is an American comic strip that ran in newspapers from 1986 to 1989, created by Jim Davis, author of the comic strip Garfield. The strip was centered on a group of barnyard animals, with the main character being Orson, a small pig who had been taken from his mother shortly after being born.

U.S. Acres was launched on March 3, 1986, in a then-unprecedented 505 newspapers by United Feature Syndicate. Most papers only ran the Sunday strip, usually on the same page as Garfield. For most of the last year of the strip's existence, Brett Koth, who had been assisting Davis on Garfield at that time, was given co-creator's credit in the strip, and signed his name to the strips along with Davis.

At the peak of the comic's popularity, there were children's books, plush animals (particularly of the characters Orson, Roy, Wade, Booker, Sheldon, and Cody), and posters of the main characters. Shirts, mugs, mousepads, and keychains of the characters would later be available. An animated adaptation was included in the TV show Garfield and Friends (1988–1994) as a spin-off segment, and continued to be so for several years after the strip ended. The final daily strip was printed on April 15, 1989, while the final Sunday appeared on May 7, 1989.

The strip was relaunched as an online webcomic on October 1, 2010, and was announced the day before in a question and answer column in USA Today.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “U.S. Acres” as comic strip by Jim Davis. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1986, 1989, 1988, 1994—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1986-03-03. The account is most persuasive where Acres, comic and strip can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as comic strip by Jim Davis. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q583673. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986, 1989, 1988 and 1994.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “U.S. Acres”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow U.S. Acres primary sources, U.S. Acres archive and Acres research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “U.S. Acres”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from U.S. Acres” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.