Waiting for the snow to melt…
T WAS contended by Colorado, in Wyoming v. Colorado,' and again, so it is reported, in the Colorado River Jnterstate Treat, negotiations, that because the continental divide-ihere so many of the rivers of the surrounding states have their source-is in Colorado, therefore all the water of those rivers is owned by Colorado, to consume as she needs.We venture to suggest that the importance of the agreement to California in this respect does not lie chiefly in its being another ruling that Colorado's contention is erroneous.It is more important if Colorado, by joining in the agreement, admits the error; a point which this paper endeavors to illustrate by two California instances within the writer's notice.1.That Colorado's contention was error seems, by the very recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Wyoming v. Colorado, sufficiently demonstrated in principle; yet our first illustration is devoted to the principle because of an unusual conjunction of facts giving it illustrative force.These rulings, which we will call the Bear River cases, 2 passed upon the relative superiority, in the waters of Bear River, of the claims of the Wheatland hop fields, the largest in California, situated at the lower end of the river, and the prescriptive claims of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company in the mountains.Plaintiffs' lands were a Mexican Grant of 1845.About twelve miles above plaintiffs' the main river and a branch, called Wolf Creek, came to a confluence out of the mountains.
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