In 1932, Celia Kelley was instrumental in establishing the forest at Lake Mitchell, a reservoir built in 1928, determined to improve the land around it. She recruited friends, the Hitchcocks and Kibbees, to obtain many types of trees and plant them around the lake and in city parks. The work was labor intensive, using picks and shovels to plant the trees, with water hauled by the bucket from Lake Mitchell. Celia Kelley was the first woman elected to the City Park Board and the first mother elected to the state legislature of South Dakota. She died in 1934, never enjoying the beauty of the many trees that she, her husband Pat, and others planted for future generations. In 2010, Mitchell citizens voted to permanently preserve this nine-acre forest for present and future generations. Ponderosa pines, the forest’s main feature, can live for hundreds of years.