Forrest H. Poe map of Homesteads in the Rattlesnake Valley Between 1880 and 1936, circa 1983

Forrest Poe was born in 1908 to Fred W. and Julia Ann Poe, homesteaders in the Rattlesnake Valley in Missoula, Montana. Forrest was the middle child of three children. He grew up on his father’s homestead farm four miles north of the present trailhead for the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area and Wilderness in Missoula, Montana. In 1931, Forrest Poe married Flossie May Galland, whose parents were homesteaders in Eastern Montana. Forrest and Flossie later took over the homestead farm that Forrest’s father, Fred, established. The couple had two daughters, Hazel and Shirley. In the late 1930s, Poe sold the homestead farm to Montana Power and moved to Locust Street in the lower Rattlesnake. Forrest H. Poe died November 4, 1993 in Missoula, Montana.