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Show LARAMIE RIVER LITIGATION 673 quality, alfalfa, oats and other forage are grown for winter feeding, the livestock being grazed most of the year on unirrigated areas and in the neighboring hills and mountains. In this way not only are the irrigated tracts made productive, but the utility and value of the grazing areas are greatly enhanced. The same industry is carried on in the same way in sections of Colorado. In both States this is a pur- pose for which the right to appropriate water may be exercised, and no discrimination is made between it and other farming. Even in this suit Colorado is asserting appropriations of this class for 4,250 acres in the portion of the Laramie valley in that State, and is claiming under them an amount of water in excess of what she asserts will irrigate a like acreage in the Poudre valley. Some of the appropriations from the stream in Wyoming are used for agriculture alone. One of the large projects, dating from terri- torial days, and constructed at great cost, carries water from the river through a tunnel one-half mile long and canals several miles in length to the Wheatland District where it is used in irrigating 30,000 acres, all of which are very successfully and profitably farmed m small tracts, This project uses one very large and one comparatively small reservoir for storing water and equalizing the natural flow. We conclude that Colorado's objections to the doctrine of appro- priation as a basis of decision are not well taken, and that it furnishes the only basis which is consonant with the principles of right and equity applicable to such a controversy as this is. The cardinal rule of the doctrine is that priority of appropriation gives superiority of right. Each of these States applies and enforces this rule in her own territory, and it is the one to which intending appropriators naturally would turn for guidance. The principle on which it proceeds is not less applicable to interstate streams and controversies than to others. Both States pronounce the rule just and reasonable as applied to the natural conditions in that region; and to prevent any departure from it the people of both incorporated it into their constitutions. It orig- inated in the customs and usages of the people before either State came into existence, and the courts of both hold that their constitu- tional provisions are to be taken as recognizing the prior usage rather than as creating a new rule. These considerations persuade us that its application to such a controversy as is here presented cannot be other than eminently just and equitable to all concerned. In suits between appropriators from the same stream, but in differ- ent States recognizing the doctrine of appropriation, the question whether rights under such appropriations should be judged by the rule of priority has been considered by several courts, state and federal, and has been uniformly answered in the affirmative. Gonant v. Deep Creek Irrigation Co., 23 Utah, 627,631; Willey v. Decker, 11 Wyo. 496, 534, 535; Taylor v. Hulett, 15 Idaho, 265, 271; Howell v. Johnson, 89 Fed. 556; Hoge v. Eaton, 135 Fed. 411; Morris v. Bean, 146 Fed. 423; Bean v. Morris, 159 Fed. 651. One of these cases came to this court and the judgment below was affirmed. Bean v. Morris, 221 UjS,/485<. These decisions, although given in suits between individuals, tend strongly to support our conclusion, for they show that by common usage, as also by judicial pronouncement, the rule of priority is regarded in such States as having the same application to a stream |
