On November 24, 1922, seven men from Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming signed their names to a four-page document called the Colorado River Compact. Along with a series of subsequent agreements known as the Law of the River, the compact determined the fate of nearly every drop of water flowing through the Southwest and parts of the Intermountain West—a land of red rock plateaus and sagebrush expanses, of isolated mountain ranges and deep canyons, all connected and sustained by thousands of threads of water that gather into the thundering Colorado.
The compact’s goal was to jump-start “the expeditious agricultural and industrial development” of this arid country, and in that, it succeeded. On the river’s journey through seven states, two countries, and 30 federally recognized tribal communities,…
