Butter - East vs West

We knew some things would be different here but who would have thought that would include butter? Washington butter doesn't fit our Ohio butter dishes and corn-on-the-cob butterer.

Back East butter is sold in long, skinny sticks. Out here in the West, it comes in fat cubes. How did that come to be? After spending way too much time googling and binging for answers, it seems to come down to butter printers. 

From ask.com - Shape of Butter Sticks 

"In the United States, butter is usually produced in 4-ounce sticks, wrapped in waxed or foiled paper and sold four to a one-pound carton. This practice is believed to have originated in 1907, when Swift and Company began packaging butter in this manner for mass distribution.

Due to historical differences in butter printers (the machines which cut and package butter), these sticks are commonly produced in two different shapes:

The dominant shape east of the Rocky Mountains is the Elgin, or Eastern-pack shape, named for a dairy in Elgin, Illinois. The sticks are 4 3⁄4 inches long and 1 1⁄4 inches (121 mm × 32 mm) wide and are typically sold stacked two by two in elongated cube-shaped boxes.

West of the Rocky Mountains, butter printers standardized on a different shape that is now referred to as the Western-pack shape. These butter sticks are 3 1⁄8 inches long and 1 1⁄2 inches wide (80 mm × 38 mm) and are usually sold with four sticks packed side-by-side in a flat, rectangular box.

Both sticks contain the same amount of butter, although most butter dishes are designed for Elgin-style butter sticks."

Aren't you glad you now know? 

Additional information and credit for above pictures  - Here, here, and here