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<br />8 <br /> <br />accounts of the river He hoped to show that before the onset of irrigation <br />development in the 1 890s, the South Platte was.an intermittent stream, <br />sometimes drying up entirely in late summer and early fall. He hired an <br />"agent," in Nebraska who did some of this work for him and who reported on <br />the political winds swirling around the state capital. 38 He interviewed old <br />timers who remembered freighting, hunting or traveling the Oregon Trail and <br />he prepared tJleir recollections as sworn affidavits to be used in court if <br />needed.39 He traveled the South Platte River basin from the Colorado line to <br />North Platte, taking notes on the number of ditches no longer in use, the <br />condition of agriculture, river flows at various places and times of year, and <br />the attitude of Nebraskans towards irrigation. As crops wilted from furnace <br />like winds and the tires came apart on his Dodge car, he concluded that <br />Nebraska people were largely ignorant of irrigation, content to gamble with <br />the weather and misled by politicians who told them that Colorado was taking <br />all their water. Unwilling to develop reservoir sites, Nebraskans appeared to <br />Carpenter as "dull-brained [and] over-confident," sentiments he surely <br />expressed only in his diary. "40 <br /> <br />The net result of his efforts was a compact whose simplicity belied the <br />extensive historical, hydrological and engineering data accumulated in seven <br />years ofnegotiations41 To Carpenter, it signified a triumph of interstate <br />diplomacy and local autonomy, an assurance of the "fullest permanent comity <br />and cooperation between signatory states." It guaranteed protection and <br />equitable apportionment of water to existing projects, laid the foundation for a <br />complete utilization of the South Platte system from the headwaters to its <br />mouth and "clear[ed] the title to every water right on the river and its <br />tributaries initiated since 1880. "42 It had been negotiated in an atmosphere of <br />trust between two men who respected each other, both working to understand <br />a neighbor's fears and phobias. <br /> <br />Making the outcome all the more remarkable, it should be noted that the <br />South Platte success occurred while Carpenter continued simultaneously with <br />another round of litigation in Washington in the Wvoming v. Colorado suit. <br />The difficulties he encountered with Wyoming and the federal government <br />revealed more clearly than ever to him the insanity oflitigation over interstate <br />