WSP11181

• File Number: 8200.300.40
• Description: Colorado River Compact
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 9/1/1991
• Author: CSU
• Title: Delph Carpenter - Father of Colorado River Treaties - Text of Gov. Ralph L. Carr's 1943 Salute to Delph Carpenter
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

realization that agriculture could be carried on
successfully, the true greatness of the West
was guessed for the first time. Out of the
necessity of life, a doctrine for the control and
administration of the scanty flows of the
streams of the arid areas was applied by the
miners and early settlers.

The law of Old England, the law of the
eastern United States, demanded that water
be permitted to leave a man's land
undiminished in quantity, and unpolluted in
quality, at the same place whence it had
always flowed in the past. But, if men were
to cultivate their acres, if they were to
establish homes in this western country,
those humid region laws, fitted to different
times and peoples and climates and ways of
life, must be ignored.

The same spirit which carried the pioneers
across the prairies and through the waters of
unbridged rivers, furnished the solution, Men
took water where they found it and carried it
by canals, often for miles and miles, to the
places where they wanted to use and enjoy
it, When others came along to deny the right
of the pioneers to continue this practice, they
had resort to the courts. And those bulwarks
of freemen, which interpret the laws to meet
men's needs, to protect their rights and to
permit them to enjoy the fruits of their labors,
adopted a theory of law different from that
recognized by their brethren who resided in
the humid regions, They declared that the
man who first diverted water from a natural
stream and applied it to a beneficial use
became entitled to divert a similar amount
every year thereafter, His right assumed the
nature of an irrevocable priority with a date

2

which went back to the first action taken in
diverting or preparing to divert the water.

It was the doctrine of "First in Time, First in
Right." Within its comprehensive terms, were
found the bases for the settlement of all
problems which might arise between rival
claimants on the same stream, It defined
each man's interest, and furnished a yard
stick and guide by which those waters and
their uses might be measured and delivered
at all times in the future, It therefore
spelled peace. It rewarded the diligent. It
established stability, It protected titles to land
by protecting the water rights used thereon,
It was the foundation stone for the
agricultural greatness which developed and
which feeds a large part of the world today.
It was different from the doctrine observed in
the eastern States, where rainfall was
adequate to supply the needs of growing
crops, but it was not unknown to the law of
waters.

It is in reality as old as civilization, It arose
out of ancient practices and rules established
in arid regions of the Old World. The first
knowledge of irrigation practices like those
now followed dates back to 4000 B.C. and is
found in the Code of Hamurabbi. The
practices of the Romans came to New Spain
with the Conquistadores and the Padres,
That part of the United States acquired from
Spain and Mexico followed irrigation practices
along the Rio Grande which controlled the
distribution of water before the Pilgrims
landed at Plymouth Rock,

But western rivers sometimes extend through
half a dozen or more states, The time came