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", OG18J? . . problem was obvious: a multipurpose reservoir like that now formed by Hoover Dam, which would also produce large quantities of hydroelectric power. That solution--daring, imaginative, and unprecedented-- met with aotive resistanoe from the states of the upper Colorado River basin, and with justification: The upper states--Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming--feared that control of the lower river would stimulate its development and hasten the appropria- . tion of water by the lower states at the expense of development and use of the water at a later date by the upper states .11 The result was a deadlock between the upper and lower states, broken in 1921 by federal and state legislation, whereby Congress and each of the seven states authorized the negotiation of the first interstate river compact. 11 The Supreme Court did not apply the law of appropriation across state lines in an interstate suit until the Laramie River decision, on June 5, 1922, while the Colorado River Compact was under negotiation. Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 u.S. 419 (l922). The Court had already done so in a suit between private appro- priators (Bean v. Morris, 221 U.S. 485 (l91l)) as had a number of other state and federal courts. See cases cited in Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 u.s. at 470-71. In the Laramie River suit, which began in 19l1, the Court in 19l7 had ordered reargument on "whether the rights asserted are to be tested and determined solely by the application of the general principles of prior appropriation, without regard to state boundaries, or whether, on the contrary, the general principles of prior appropriation are subject to be restricted or their operation limited in this case by state lines, and if so, by what principles, under that assumption, the case is to be controlled." Wyoming v. Colorado, 243 U.S. 622 (l9l7). 14.