riverton

By treaty, Native Americans in 1868 were reserved land along—and water from—Wyoming’s Wind River. But it would take a century and a half for courts to work out what water was whose—and to begin to define what tribal owners of the water could and couldn’t use their water for. 

Sixteen years after Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, Wyoming became the 49th state to view public television. Surviving on shoestring budgets of federal, state and private funds, donated equipment and volunteer pledge drives, Wyoming PBS managed to expand across the state—and finally to thrive.