Brooks

Plaintiffs had judgment in an action prosecuted to establish a preferential right to the use of certain waters of the Stanislaus River, from which judgment the defendants appeal.

The plaintiffs are the owners of certain tracts of land located within the vicinity of Knights Perry, in the county of Stanislaus, which lands have been irrigated for over fifty years from waters taken from the Stanislaus river and conveyed to said lands by means of a certain dam and ditch diverting the waters of said Stanislaus River thereto. None of the lands belonging to the plaintiffs lie within the exterior boundaries of either the Oakdale Irrigation District or the South San Joaquin Irrigation District. The two districts just mentioned were organized during the year 1909.

The transcript shows that sometime during the year 1853 a dam was built in the Stanislaus River at a certain point known as and called “Six Mile Bar,” lying between the counties of Calaveras and Tuolumne, from which point water was diverted and conveyed through a certain ditch, which became known thereafter, at a period not mentioned, as the “Schell Ditch,” to the vicinity of Knights Perry in the county of Stanislaus, and there…