fanegas of wheat."12 Alongside this document is record of the 1985 payment of $57,500 to settle the Sandias' claim. Both records illustrate the importance such files hold for researchers. The critical importance of determining water rights in the West is clearly evident in other case files. A circuit court case filed in Colorado in 1890 pitted plaintiff, the U.S. Freehold Land and Emigration Company, against defendants Diego Gallegos et al., owners of the San Luis Peoples Ditch. 13 The plaintiffs alleged ownership by purchase of half a million acres of what had originally been part of the Sangre de Cristo land grant from the Mexican government. Included in the claim was the Culebra River, "both banks of said stream from its source to its mouth."14 Defendants were farmers in the area who stated in their answer that they had been irrigating with water diverted from the Culebra for more than forty years and that the ditch they had constructed in 1852 had been built with the consent of Charles Beaubien, then heir to the Sangre de Cristo grant. The judge's memorandum and final decree in the case contain informative discussions of water rights law as it was interpreted for the arid West at the end of the nineteenth century. In the judge's words, "The constitution of the state of Colorado provides that the water of every natural stream, not heretofore appropriated within the state of Colorado, is hereby declared to be the property of the public."15 The judge emphasized the necessity for particular water policy and law noting that "the common law doctrine relating to the rights of riparian proprietor in the water of a natural stream, and the use thereof, is unsuited to our requirements and necessities and never did obtain in this region of country." Final disposition of the case favored the defendants, who were awarded specific amounts of water and whose water rights were judged to be prior to those of the U.S. Freehold Land and Emigration Company. The same order was then extended to the ten other cases on the docket in which Freehold sought injunctive relief. When agents for the Bureau of Land Management in Utah rounded up and destroyed horses they viewed as abandoned on open range land, the Navajo Indians who alleged ownership of the horses filed suit to recover damages. Bill Hatahley, Widow Sleepy, Charlie Burke, et al. v. The United States of America was filed March 20, 1953, in the U.S. district court in Utah.17 The plaintiffs claimed that the Navajos had lived upon and grazed horses upon range land "beyond the memory of man" and had "aboriginal rights to the use and possession of said 18 area. They further accused the government of allowing other interests to pursue a policy of driving the Navajos off their ancestral homes. The government answered the complaint citing Utah laws that defined an "abandoned horse" and "open range" and asserting the rights given the Bureau of Land Management in its jurisdiction over federal grazing districts. 19 The answer further asserted that the Navajos had failed to obtain grazing permits. In 1954 the district court found for the plaintiffs, ordering a $100,000 award for their losses and instituting an injunction to prohibit further harassment. However, an appeal reversed this decision. The Supreme Court received the case in 1956 and overruled the appellate decision. A mandate sent the case back to the district court for a more accurate determination of the judgment award. Ensuing litigation proceeded for years and included the removal of one of the judges hearing the case for alleged bias. A compromise was ultimately reached and settlement stipulated on May 19, 1961. The plaintiffs received $45,000. The preserved records found in this case file document the complexity of this issue as well as the intensity of feeling associated with it. Pages of testimony are included as are a number of photographs that show the individual Indians involved and some of their horses and burros. As court case files held by the Nation Archives-Rocky Mountain Region demonstrate, dividing up the public domain was a major focus in the history of the West. Indeed, today battles over the control and use of vital natural resources continue to erupt and to emerge in the courtroom for peaceful resolution. One recent Supreme Court decision has upheld a federal law that prohibits a rancher in Wyoming from fencing across public lands.20 In the San Luis Valley in Colorado, the latest chapter in water policy is being written as a modern day water corporation challenges Colorado law in an attempt to pump 200,000 acre-feet of water a year from aquifers.21 An understanding of today's issues in the West depends to a great extent upon an understanding of yesterday's. Fortunately, many of yesterday's issues are richly detailed within the framework of U.S. court cases. The cases discussed in this article are merely representative of the many, many U.S. court case files preserved in the regional archives. They constitute an important primary resource available to researchers, historians, and other interested individuals. Two of the Navajo plaintiffs in the case to maintain grazing rights for their horses stand outside an abandoned hogan in Utah. The Navajo won their case, but appeals and further litigation delayed final settlement until 1961. NOTES Susan Chambers is on the staff of the National Archives- The author wishes to acknowledge assistance from Eric 1Horace A.W. Tabor, Jerome B. Chaffee, et al. v. Wirt Dexter, Howard Oviatt, and Thomas J. Cooper, Civil Case 217, U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Colorado (USCCC), Records of District Courts of the United States, Record Group 21, National Archives-Rocky Mountain Region (hereafter, records in the National Archives will be cited as RG NA-[region]). Walter Heald, Criminal Case 1S, U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming, RG 21, NA-Rocky Mountain. "Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11The United States of America as Guardian of the Indians of the Pueblo of Sandia in the State of New Mexico v. George Abousleman, et al., Equity Case 1839, U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, RG 21, NA-Rocky Mountain. 12 Ibid. SACRAMENTO SAN JOAQUIN RIVERS CALIFORNIA SHOWING TRIBUTARY STREAMS. DRAINING HYDRAULIC MINING DISTRICTS. SCALE 12 MILES TO INCH This map showing the mining area, draining tributaries, and land affected by hydraulic mining in California was in a congressional report used as an exhibit in Edwards Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company et al. the Flowers Gone? Early Environmental Litigation I By Waverly B. Lowell s civilization worthwhile if its material needs destroy the natural world? This might have been one of the questions asked by John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club in California in 1892.1 The desire and struggle to preserve the environment, despite the demands made on it by the needs of civilization, is not new. It has long been understood that the dominant contemporary values involved in developing the natural resources of this country were values that contained little regard for the environment. These values were supported by the language of law, property values, and enterprise.2 While environmental protection and the field of environmental law presently may hold a prominent place in society, there have always been individuals and organizations fighting the pollution, devastation, and environmental change caused by the use and exploitation of natural resources in the development of the West. Many of these battles were fought in the courts, just as they are today. Lawmakers in the West "confronted the problems of the environment in a marketplace context,"3 and many of their activities are documented in the federal court holdings of the National Archives' Regional Archives System. The records of the Circuit Court of the U.S. District Court for Northern California held by the Pacific Sierra Region are a rich source for studying the field of early environmental litigation. In California, creation of a federal court system followed shortly after the state's admission to the Union in 1850. The act of September 28, 1850, established two federal courts in California, the northern and southern districts, divided by the thirty-seventh parallel. A circuit court was established in addition to the district court, and in early 1870 President Grant appointed Lorenzo Sawyer, who had just completed a term as a justice of the California Supreme Court, as the first circuit judge for the then ninth circuit. Sawyer held his first session on February 2, 1870.4 The following cases were selected from civil case dockets tried in this circuit court and represent a sample of early environmental litigation. It has been said that litigants seldom sued to stop the environmental devastation, given the pro-industry judicial opinions of the nineteenth In State of Nevada v. Floriston Pulp and Paper Company, the state charged Floriston with polluting the Truckee River, the source of Reno's drinking water. This exhibit documents the kinds and amounts of chemicals shipped to the mill. century. Although the number of environmental cases may have been only a small part of the court's caseload, the records of the Circuit Court for the Northern District of California do contain civil case files documenting the struggle against water and air pollution, damage to national forest land, and the destructive environmental effects of hydraulic mining. California, the instant state, matured in an age of industrial development. This industrialism moved civilization "forward" through the use of natural resources, with little immediate attention to the effect it might have on the environment and the quality of life it supported. For example, though air may not be perceived as a natural resource, its quality can have a dramatic impact on the environment, as seen in London's "black fogs" of the nineteenth century and the acid rain of the twentieth. In the 1914 case of Charles Wiedeman v. Penn Mining Company, a farmer sought compensation from an ore refinery that was alleged to be pol luting the air and causing destruction to his farm. According to the complaint the plaintiff believed that said ores so reduced, smelted, roasted, burned and refined by defendant contained and contain large quantities of arsenic, sulphur, and other substances ... and when refined gave and give forth. . . and now produce in the air large quantities of sulphurous, arsenical, noxious, poisonous and offensive vapors, fumes, smoke gasses and other substances [that] have been and now are hurtful, deleterious, injurious and destructive to wire fences, animals, vegetation, trees and lands, and the crops and products thereof.? Wiedeman was requesting financial compensation for injury to his fences, crops, and orchards and for the lessening of the "vitality and fertility" of his land. In an attempt to negate the effects of their industrial emission, Penn Mining Company wanted to conduct an inspection of the plaintiff's land "to determine whether said |