Driggs Outbuildings / "Cabbage Patch"
Virginia City National Historic Landmark District
This small L-shaped collection of outbuildings appears in historic photographs dating to the 1860s. Originally owned by Walter Dance and James Stuart among others, E. W. Driggs owned the property by 1869. The small board-and-batten buildings served as barn, coal shed, and outbuilding. Such buildings were essential elements of daily life in the nineteenth century. Zena Hoff, a Virginia City character and Bovey employee, recreated a series of cribs in the buildings, using her own personal experience as a former “girl of the line” and later madam in the famous “Cabbage Patch” in Butte, Montana. The exteriors of these early essential outbuildings are unchanged and thus add significantly to the 1860s Virginia City “image.” As the “Cabbage Patch,” the small grouping gains added significance for its association with the colorful Zena Hoff, and her contribution to “Bovey history.”
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