HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
Surviving shacks of Butte's notorious turn-of-the-century slum
E Mercury St, Butte, MT 59701
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Old Butte Historical Adventures' East Walking Tour, which includes the Cabbage Patch, runs about $25 per person with a minimum group size. Viewing the surviving shacks from the public right-of-way is free.
Access
Limited Access
Uneven streets and alleys on the steep grade of Uptown Butte; a small cluster of pre-1890 frame shacks survives
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1880 · Immigrant and Working-Poor History · Butte-Anaconda National Historic Landmark District · Cleared 1940 under the Federal Housing Act
The Cabbage Patch took its name from the cheap cabbage that made up much of its residents' diet. The neighborhood developed in Uptown Butte from about 1880 onward, and its growth was tied to a legal tangle: for nearly twenty years ownership of the land was caught up in a drawn-out dispute, so there was no clear landlord to collect rent or control who built there.
That vacuum made the Patch a haven for squatters. It became home to poor families, widows with children, newly arrived immigrants, bootleggers, and people with nowhere else to go, alongside a criminal element that gave the district its hard reputation. Local histories record roughly twenty suspicious deaths in the neighborhood between 1919 and 1939 and connect the area to the Mahoney gang.
The Cabbage Patch lasted until 1940, when at least 225 structures, most of them shacks, were demolished under the Federal Housing Act and replaced with a low-income housing project. A small group of pre-1890 frame shacks survived the clearance and still stand, and they have become a focal point for Butte's history walks. The neighborhood has also drawn renewed attention through local journalism and a published history of the district.
Sources
The Cabbage Patch earns its place on Butte ghost walks through its history rather than a single famous specter. The district's two decades without a landlord, its concentration of desperate poverty, and the roughly twenty suspicious deaths recorded between 1919 and 1939 give guides a great deal to work with.
Butte tour companies, including Historic Butte Haunts, present the surviving shacks as a stop where visitors can stand in what is left of one of the West's hardest neighborhoods. The accounts tied to the site tend toward a general sense of unease, cold pockets among the old structures, and the feeling of being watched along the narrow lanes, rather than named apparitions.
Because so little of the neighborhood survives, much of its power as a tour stop comes from the gap between the quiet cluster of shacks today and the crowded, violent district that once filled these blocks.
A guided walking tour through Uptown Butte's east side that includes the surviving shacks of the Cabbage Patch shantytown along with other historic sites. Run by Old Butte Historical Adventures; reservations required, with a minimum group size.
A handful of pre-1890 frame shacks from the Cabbage Patch were preserved and can be seen from the surrounding streets in Uptown Butte. The neighborhood once held more than 200 buildings before its 1940 clearance.
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