Arizona was girding for war with California over the Colorado River.
The year was 1934 and the place was the construction site of Parker Dam, downstream from the nearly completed Hoover Dam.
Arizona Gov. Benjamin Baker Moeur, irked that a federally approved interstate compact had awarded California more water from the Colorado than he thought it deserved, dispatched a squad of National Guard troops to the river on a ferryboat to block the new dam's construction.
