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Russell fished a few bits of gold from a muddy tributary of the Sout h Platte, setting off <br />17 <br />the greatest single mass migration in American history. Farmers and miners alike <br />poured into the valley in droves, and by 1861, water was being siphoned from all the <br />18 <br />principal streams in the river’s upper reaches for mining and irrigation. This activity <br />was sanctioned by the newly formed Colorado Territory as a right “so universal and <br />19 <br />imperious that it claims recognition of the law.” By the time Colorado reached <br />statehood in 1876, water was treated as a transferable public commodity. <br />The legal severance of water from land was a departure. In the East, following <br />English common law, water and land were basically insepara ble: owners of property <br />bordering a lake or river had a right to use the adjoining wa ter. Under this system, known <br />in legal parlance as the Riparian Doctrine (derived from the Latin word ripa , meaning the <br />bank of a stream), a watercou rse was, in most cases, fo rbidden to be modified or <br />diminished to the detriment of other riparian property ow ners. Shortages were shared <br />20 <br />equally by all affected landowners. <br />A different system developed in Califo rnia during 1849 gold rush. Streams were <br />often inconveniently located for mining purposes : overlying a promising bed of gravel, or <br />too distant from gold deposits to be useful. To solve either problem, water had to be <br />redirected from its normal cha nnel. It could then be treated as an in dependent property <br />right, established by diversion and subsequent application, conceptually separate from the <br />17 <br /> For an environmental history of the Colorado gold rush, see Elliott West, The Contested Plains: Indians, <br />Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998) . <br />18 <br /> Tom Cech, “Water Development and Management Along the South Platte River of Colorado,” in Water <br />and Climate in the Western United States, ed. William M. Lewis, Jr. (Boulder: University of Colorado <br />Press, 2003), 153-159. <br />19 <br />Yunker v. Nichols, 1 Colo. 551 (1872). See also Gregory J. Ho bbs, Jr., “The Role of Climate in Shaping <br />Western Water Institutions,” University of Denver Water Law Review (Fall 2003), 10. <br />20 <br /> For a concise explanation of riparian water rights, see Robert Dunbar, Forging New Rights in Western <br />Waters (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 59-61. <br />9 <br />