Beck is only the third owner of the Locusts — the nationally listed historic home on Route 62 in Pine Grove Township.

He has a 185-year-old home, 23 stately, 200-year-old black locust trees, and thousands of other trees — hundreds of black locusts planted in the 1950s and 1960s, a Chinese dawn redwood, a 320-year-old oak called ‘Mother’, and a giant black walnut.

On Monday, his efforts, and the trees, were set back.

A Labor Day wind storm that struck all over the county, downing trees and power lines, and resulting in hundreds of households still being without power Wednesday afternoon, swept right through the 14 acres at the Locusts.

Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry A tangled mass of trunks and branches is all that remains of a stand of dozens of stately trees just north of the Locusts following Monday's wind storm.

Beck was there. He sat on his back porch through “45 minutes of sheer hell … listening to them crack and fall,” relatively safe as the winds were out of the south.

The wind direction didn’t provide him complete comfort.

“The first one was terrifying,” he said. “I stood right up. I knew it was coming.”

He acted as witness to the destruction as it brought down trees that mean as much to him as they did to the Walker family that planted so many locusts.

“I think we have 100 trees down,” Beck said. “Most of them are the black locusts that the Walkers planted in the ’50s and ’60s.”

He estimates the winds that could wreak such havoc on such enormous trees to be 75 to 90 miles per hour.

The house was built to last. Even the interior walls are three locally-fired bricks thick. The 24-inch beams upstairs are single pieces for the length of the house, pegged together with wood — no nails. It all sits on several layers of hand cut Pine Grove stone.

The trees left the house alone. “Not one scratch on the house,” Beck said.

There were 23 of the oldest black locusts — the ones that were probably planted around when the Thompson Brothers put up the (still standing) original outhouse in 1831 or when they completed construction of the house for Guy Irvine in 1835.

Three of those giants fell on Monday.

One crashed through the bear fence that surrounds the front yard, but, like the others, spared the house.

The walnut tree at the back of the house was ripped apart. The portions of it that fell missed the vehicles parked around it.

‘Mother’ — farther west — was undamaged. Her 18-foot girth remains a comfort to Beck.

When he first saw the impact to the north of the house, he thought the redwood would be among those lost.

Locusts all around were broken off or uprooted. “It looks like a bomb went off,” he said.

The giant redwood, one of very few that has survived outside of China, is still standing straight and tall.

Owning a property like the Locusts — which is on the National Register of Historic Places — is a privilege for Beck.

“It’s just such an amazing piece of property,” he said.

The land comes with stipulations.

“The Walkers donated this view of Western Pennsylvania to the people of Warren County in the early 1980s,” he said. “The landscaping was original to the house. I can’t change the property.”

Even to remove a tree that is threatening the house, he has to make some calls.

It’s worth it, Beck said. “I feel humbled to live here.”

Seeing so many trees on the ground is a hard loss for Beck. But, those trees were put there at the expense of other species and Beck, now that there is room for regrowth, is looking forward to the return of pines to his Pine Grove Township home.