The Columbia Interstate Compact represented an attempt to establish a regional institutional mechanism for river basin development. After seven Pacific Northwest states spent 18 years negotiating the Compact, and five attempts were made to ratify the Compact in the state legislatures, Oregon and Washington had not ratified. This study is in essence a history of the Compact negotiations, describing the efforts of the seven states in the context of the political environment in which the Compact was negotiated. Although the Compact effort may be dead, most issues with which it dealt, including allocation of water, reservation of power for states in which a dam is constructed, and out-of-basin diversion, are very much alive.