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Show 92 CHARACTERISTICS OF WATERCOURSE belong to the plaintiffs, either immediately before the avulsion, or afterward to the time the gravel was sold. Many "oxbows" or crescent shaped bends may be located along the courses of winding rivers, of which the Mississippi is a conspicuous example. In periods of high floodflow, the swollen stream may cut across the neck or open end of the bend and may make the cutoff the permanent new channel, leaving the abandoned channel around the curve of the bend to contain only such overflow as may spill over at the peak of high floods. These channel changes are clear examples of avulsion. Effect on Political Boundaries The United States Supreme Court has held that the laws of accretion and avulsion apply to State boundary lines as well as to those of individual property holdings. In 1892 the Court held that:364 Our conclusions are that, notwithstanding the rapidity of the changes in the course of the channel, and the washing from the one side and on to the other, the law of accretion controls on the Missouri River, as elsewhere; and that not only in respect to the rights of individual land owners, but also in respect to the boundary lines between States. The boundary, therefore, between Iowa and Nebraska is a varying line, so far as affected by these changes of diminu- tion and accretion in the mere washing of the waters of the stream. It appears, however, from the testimony, that in 1877 the river above Omaha, which has pursued a course in the nature of an ox-bow, suddenly cut through the neck of the bow and made for itself a new channel. This does not come within the law of accretion, but of that of avulsion. By this selection of a new channel the boundary was not changed, and it remained as it was prior to the avulsion, the centre line of the old channel; and that, unless the waters of the river returned to their former bed, became a fixed and unvarying boundary, no matter what might be the changes of the river in its new channel. Another example of change of the Missouri River channel by avulsive action at the neck of an oxbow, which also involved a question of interstate boundary, appeared in Missouri v. Nebraska*65 and is noted here in detail because of pertinence of the factual circumstances. The middle of the channel of the Missouri River had been fixed by Congress as the interstate boundary between these two States. On July 5, 1867 (after Nebraska had been admitted to the Union), within a period of 24 hours and in a time of very high water, the 364 Nebraska v. Iowa, 143 U.S. 359, 369-370 (1892). In Oklahoma v. Texan, 260 U.S. 606, 636-638 (1923), applicability of the doctrine of erosion and accretion to the Red River, particularly in western Oklahoma, was questioned by litigants because of the rapidity and material changes effected during rises in the river. "But we think the habit of this river is so like that of the Missouri in this regard that the rule relating to the latter in Nebraska v. Iowa, 143, U.S. 359, 368, is controlling." 365Missouri w.Nebraska, 196 U.S. 23, 34-37 (1904). |