Colorado River too much of the lower basin allotment; in 1944 a compromise was reached in which Arizona would get a firm allocation of , but only if California's allocation was prioritized during drought years. These and nine other decisions, compacts, federal acts and agreements made between 1922 and 1973 form what is now known as the Law of the River. On September 30, 1935, the United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) completed Hoover Dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River. Behind the dam rose Lake Mead, the largest artificial lake in the U.S., capable of holding more than two
Course of the Colorado River flows through the Parker Valley, much of which belongs to the Colorado River Indian Reservation, and then the Palo Verde Valley, where it is crossed by Interstate 10 near Blythe, California. The small Headgate Rock Dam removes water for irrigation in the Parker Valley and the Palo Verde Dam provides water to the Palo Verde Valley. The river then flows through a canyon in the Trigo Mountains, where the Cibola and Imperial National Wildlife Refuge encompass the wetland areas formed above Imperial Dam, which filled with silt shortly upon its completion in the 1930s. Most of the Colorado's remaining flow