In July 1945 she donated the entire Brown County property ( 211 acres of land) that included the house, its furnishings and decorative arts, a large studio and other buildings, and more than 300 of her husband's paintings to the Indiana Department of Conservation (the present-day Indiana Department of Natural Resources) to establish the T. C. Steele State Historic Site, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 as the Theodore Clement Steele House and Studio.