A bill for an act providing for the appointment of a commissioner on behalf of the state of Colorado to negotiate a compact or agreement between the states of Colorado and Kansas..., undated

This subseries represents the main focus of Carpenter's career: creating, negotiating, and promoting interstate river compacts. The materials are categorized by river and therein arranged alphabetically. The exception is compact drafts, which are arranged as chronologically as possible; often the drafts are undated and unnumbered, making determinations as to sequence difficult. The river compacts documented at length here are the Colorado, North Platte, Rio Grande, and South Platte; the Arkansas, La Plata, Little Snake, and Upper Colorado compacts are documented to a lesser extent. There is also one file related to the Laramie River. Materials related just to the Platte or to the Platte and its branches (North/South) are filed under South Platte. Carpenter's historical research on the South Platte and Platte in Nebraska in 1918 in part led to the formulation of his compact idea. The statements listed are interviews with people recounting their memories of the river.

Documents related to the general subject of compacts are filed in the Compacts category. This also includes federal legislation related to the compacts. Various documents on irrigation or general water issues are grouped into the Water category. Document types on each river can include the following: drafts, reports, court documents, maps, data, legislation, articles, speeches, minutes, notes, and more. The minutes of the 1922 Colorado River Commission meetings are complete in original or in photocopy except for the 26th meeting. The papers found in files titled "Photocopies" in the Colorado River category were found with the photocopied correspondence (see Series 1, Subseries 2), the originals of which may be in the Hoover Presidential Library's Carpenter collection.