Anne MacKinnon

Water-law scholar Anne MacKinnon lives in Casper. She is a former editor-in-chief of the Casper Star-Tribune and served from 2003 through 2010 on the Wyoming Water Development Commission.

Jacqueline “Jackie” Ellis

Jacqueline “Jackie” Ellis (1929-2025) grew up in Kemmerer and Green River, Wyoming, in the 1930s and 1940s. She graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1953, then moved to Casper, where she worked for Ohio Oil Company (later Marathon) during the city’s postwar oil boom. In 1955 she married Frank “Pinky” Ellis. Together they raised three children in Casper, while she later taught business and English at Kelly Walsh High School for more than twenty years.

Native Rights to Wind River Water

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.

Order out of Chaos: Elwood Mead and Wyoming’s Water Law

Elwood Mead was only 30 in 1888 when Territorial Gov. Thomas Moonlight hired him to bring order to Wyoming’s water law. As territorial engineer Mead did just that, and his ideas were written into the state constitution adopted in 1890. Mead spent only 11 years in Wyoming, but all his life carried with him what he learned in the state.