Peter Armstrong founded Celestia in the 1850s as a mountaintop refuge for millennialists awaiting the end of the world, laying it out in a nine-block grid with the central lot reserved for Christ’s return. In 1864 he deeded the land itself to “Almighty God and His heirs in Jesus Messiah” — an owner who never paid property taxes, so the county seized and sold it. What’s there now is forest, a few old foundation lines, and a historical marker on Route 42; the town itself never really got built.