320 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



Thus a remarkable increase in cooperative owner- 

 ship and regulation of irrigation enterprises is made 

 clear. 



It is interesting to note that from the earliest days 

 in California there has been a popular conception of 

 public ownership and distribution of irrigation wa- 

 ter struggling for domination over private ownership 

 and sale. Before 1870 and afterwards, it took the 

 form of demands on United States engineers to make 

 surveys of the great interior valleys to determine 

 their availability for irrigation and the adequacy 

 of existing stream flow to irrigate them. Such sur- 

 veys were made and their conclusions favored public 

 enterprise but the cost was always far beyond any 

 financing which seemed practicable. Later, individ- 

 ual investors took up parts of the general enterprise, 

 bought land and appropriated water. Others fol- 

 lowed them on different lands but could not own the 

 water because it was claimed, beyond all capacities 

 of the streams, by prior appropriates. Issues arose 

 in the courts and famous trials were held. The old 

 riparian rights of the English common law came into 

 conflict with the appropriation rights which Cali- 

 fornia miners constituted the law of the land and 

 which appropriates for irrigation engrafted their 

 claims on. The common belief after several court de- 

 cisions was that California should have the best irri- 

 gation laws of the world while in fact it had the 

 worst. Every legislature which assembled at the 

 State capital after a year of short rainfall was urged 

 by a public conscience awakened to the need of irri- 



