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Boulder Canyon. New .16' x 15' drill barge at work on Hole U200N120. Not only were the engineering problems immense, hut the elements of nature seemed to conspire against those pioneers of river controL But, in spite of summer temperatures of 1300 in the canyon, cloudbursts, high winds, and sudden floods, the work of surveying the darosite \,,"'ent forward steadily. In 1924 the Bureau of Reclamation submitted eight volumes of precise data to the Secretary of the Interior. The report emphasized the feasibility of a high dam at Boulder or Black Canyon (also known as Lower Boulder Canyon) in the lower basin. A report of the Senate Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation in March 1928 agreed that "The overwhelming weight of opinion favors the Boulder or Black Canyon site. . . . Natural condit:ons at this site are extremely fa~o:rable for the construction of a great dam at a minimum cost." II (I 1756 A board of consulting engineers also reviewed the feasibilities of the two sites in the lower basin. This board agreed with the Bureau of Reclamation that Black Canyon was the better site. Thus, the locale of this projected dam-to become one of the major engi. neering accomplishments of all time-was settled. The engineering technique was but one phase of the over. all problem of river control. Another-the legislative phase-had also to be solved. The most difficult legislative aspect was the equitable division of the water of the Colorado; for the people who lived in the basin were dependent on the river's water. Wherever they lived, their right to use Colorado River watcr was far more valuable than their title to the land upon which they resided. BIdding /.lIe l1'-ut..,,.s . A condition precedent to any great Colorado River project was an equitable division of the river's waters among the basin States. Each State asserted certain rights to the waters within its own boundary, and regarded, with alarm, any step which might jeopardize its claimed rights. In addition to the claims of each State there were the claims of Mexico which also asserted certain rights to the stream's resources. Six of the basin States were in harmony in that each recognized the theory of appropriation and use as the basic law governing rights to water. In short, this theory was based on the principle that the first to appropriate the water was the first in right to its use. But this theory would place in jeopardy any State which was not in position to appropriate all its potential usage of water before another State had laid claim to such by prior use. California's laws differed from those of the other six States. California had enacted and put into operation a code of laws recognizing appropriation by beneficial usage but also sought to retain its modified common. law doctrine of riparian rights-the right of a landowner to the water contiguous to his property regardless of usage. Naturally, this theory conflicted with the laws of the other six States. Furthennore, there was no assurance that the normal flow of the Colorado was sufficient to supply all potential projects in both the upper and lower basins, and when the proposal of a great storage dam in the lower basin began to take shape the upper basin States became alarmed. They felt that such a dam would enable water users in the lower basin States to assert a claim to all of the unappropriated water of the upper basin. Not that the existing uses could be endangered, but there would be a distinct threat to all future potential development in the upper basin States. The threatened danger seemed even more imminent with the proposed power development. Arizona, by bringing large areas of the lower Gila River Basin under irrigation as well as some land in the vicinity of Parker on the Colorado, had brought the problem of States' water rights by appropriation and use into bold relief. 8617030--50----3 9