Celestia, the City Deeded to God

Somewhere above this Sullivan County ridge, Peter E. Armstrong founded a community he called Celestia in eighteen fifty-three, convinced that this mountaintop was a proper site for a City of Heaven, a refuge for believers who considered themselves wilderness exiles awaiting the end of the age.

In eighteen sixty-four, Armstrong took the unusual step of formally deeding the land not to himself or his congregation but to Almighty God, quote, and to His heirs in Jesus Messiah. The Sullivan County tax assessor was unmoved by this arrangement. When the divine landowner failed to pay property taxes, the county sold the land at auction in eighteen seventy-six, purchasing it, in an irony worth noting, by Armstrong's own son. Peter Armstrong spent his final years struggling to hold the community together, and died in eighteen eighty-seven with his City of Heaven largely scattered. The land remains, and the deed still reads as written.