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Show 386 APPROPRIATION OF WATER begun-provided the work is carried to completion and the water is applied to beneficial use with reasonable diligence.804 (4) Local custom. Before enactment of the legislative acts authorizing acquisition of appropriative rights which were initiated by posting and filing notice of appropriation, local customs to that effect had developed in many areas of the West. In California, this custom was adopted in the gold mining regions from similar mining practices.805 [In Oregon, before the legislative enactment of 1891,] it was a recognized rule that the appropriation of water of a stream, initiated by the posting and recording of a notice of appropriation, in accordance with a custom, and perfected by diversion and application of the water to a beneficial use within a reasonable time, dates back under the doctrine of relation to the first step taken.* * * Such a rule may be said to have become established, under varying circumstances and conditions, in this state.806 In one of its earliest water rights decisions, the Montana Supreme Court held that notices of appropriation posted on a stream, and immediate entering on the work of constructing dam and ditch, were sufficient to put other parties on their guard and to apprise them of the initiated appropriation.807 Nonadministration statutes.-The early statutes of a number of Western States and Territories embodied the posting and filing procedure in their provisions for acquiring water rights. Some of them provided specifically for application of the doctrine of relation. (See "Statutory-Original Statutory Appropriation Procedures," above.) For example, the California Civil Code- which was the earliest of these statutes, and which became the prototype for several of them-provided with respect to this feature that:808 Sec. 1418. By a compliance with the above rules the claimant's right to the use of the water relates back to the time the notice was posted. Sec. 1419. A failure to comply with such rules deprives the claimants of the first right to the use of the water as against a subsequent claimant who complies therewith. Although these early statutory procedures were not regarded as exclusive methods of appropriating water, it was necessary that they should be followed by one who wished to obtain the advantage of the doctrine of relation.809 But 804Arizona v. California, 298 U. S. 558, 565-566 (1936). 805 Harding, S. T., "Water Rights for Irrigation," p. 24 (1936). 806In re Silvies River, 115 Oreg. 27, 39, 237 Pac. 322 (1925). By compliance with the rules and regulations of the Harris mining district, Alaska, adopted in 1882, a claimant's right to the use of water related back to the time the notice was posted: McFarland v. Alaska Perserverance Min. Co., 3 Alaska 308, 336 (1907). The rule, said the court, stated the law, even in the absence of a miners' rule or custom. 807 Woolman v. Garringer, 1 Mont. 535, 544-545 (1872). 808 Cal. Civ. Code § § 1418 and 1419 (1872). 809Duckworth v. Watsonville Water & Light Co., 158 Cal. 206, 211, 110 Pac. 927 (1910), 170 Cal. 425, 431, 150 Pac. 58 (1915); Sand Point Water & Light Co. v. Panhandle Development Co., 11 Idaho 405, 412-414, 83 Pac. 347 (1905); Murray v. Tingley, 20 |