Caleb Crosby built a barn and threshing machine entirely by hand from wood on the north side of the Holston River in what later was called the Crosby Settlement in Noeton community. Power generated by oxen was transmitted by a drive shaft to the threshing machine inside the main building, where a maze of wooden gears included one as large as a wagon wheel. The threshing barn stood from the 1830s for about 100 years a short distance down the Holston from where the David A. Greene Bridge now spans Cherokee Lake on U.S. Highway 25-E. Before the site was flooded by the lake, Caleb's grandsons Powell and Bryan Crosby donated the barn and threshing machine to the National Park Service. Because no such barn had existed in the Great Smokey Mountains before the park era, plans to reassemble it within the park were rejected, but officials preserved the dismantled timbers in sheltered good condition for 34 years before donating them to the Tennessee State Park system. The barn was reconstructed at its present site in 1978.