Once Wyoming had no boundaries but rivers and mountain ranges, and the people who lived here knew them well.

Now Wyoming is a big rectangle, boxed by four imaginary lines, the top and bottom bent a little to hug the earth's curves.

The half-million people who live inside the box call themselves Wyomingites and those who've lived here long know what that means, if newcomers wonder.

But few spend much time questioning the box itself, thinking about the eastern men who drew it, who carved it from territories east and west, gave it a name and established a government when the trains came, wondering if the land could support enough people to support a government.

The box doesn't exist except in the notations of surveyors, the minds of citizens and, of course, on maps.

When Jack Rosenthal was eight years old, a boy living in Buffalo at the top of the box on the map, his uncle got him a subscription to National Geographic. Tucked inside were maps Rosenthal unfurled onto the floor. He sat there for hours, studying their lines and dots.

"For some reason or another, they just fascinated me. They sort of opened up the world to me," he says.

Growing up in Wyoming, history was so recent, he said. The trails, the forts, all in his backyard.

At the University of Wyoming, at the bottom of the map, he studied history with T.A. Larson, who wrote a book, "History of Wyoming," now on bookshelves in homes all over the map.

And when Rosenthal grew up and got into the media business, and became vice president and general manager of KTWO, he started buying a few maps of his own.

He traveled all over the country, and he'd stop in old bookshops and ask if they had anything on Wyoming. Storekeepers took him up rickety staircases and elevators into dusty storage rooms where they showed him old Wyoming maps, drawn before and after Wyoming was a box.

Rosenthal also collected art, and he'd take his maps and art home to Casper. He had some people over to his house from the Nicolaysen Art Museum, where his wife Elaine is a longtime volunteer, to see his art and he showed them the maps, too, and they said they had a hunch other people would be interested in old Wyoming maps.

So they framed the maps and hung them in the art museum this summer and hundreds of people came to look. They made prints of the maps and hundreds of people bought copies.

Last week Rosenthal gave a tour to some schoolchildren, who paid close attention. One boy pointed out an error on one of the maps: the land east of Wyoming was marked as Dakota, as in territory, when by the time the map was drawn, it was South Dakota.

"I was delighted that a kid would be so interested in the display he would pick that out."

Adults have been just as interested in walking slowly down the long hallway where the maps hang, watching Wyoming and its counties emerge as maps move by like scenes in a film.

"They're wonderfully popular," curator Ben Mitchell said. "People are really engaged. They tell a story of this place through the changing boundaries of the territory."

Rosenthal points out how people, not just government, had a say in lines on the map. He explains the funny little dip in the northeast corner of Albany County. The land is now part of Converse County, after ranchers lobbied for the change. It was just easier to drive to the county seat in Douglas rather than cross the Laramie Mountains.

Mitchell is especially interested in the mistakes on the maps. One shows two Big Horn mountain ranges.

The popular favorite, judging from print sales, is the map that shows the original five counties: Uinta. Sweetwater, Carbon, Albany and Laramie.

"We had no idea whether there would be a lot of interest or not," Rosenthal said. "It has far exceeded even the most optimistic expectation."

That's why he decided to make the maps a permanent part of the museum's collection.

People made Wyoming what it is, and they should be able to come and see its transformation from four lines on a map, to the place they call home.

Reach Barbara Nordby at (307) 266-0633 or at barbara.nordby@casperstartribune.net.