Christopher Bechtler's coining shop was a busy place during the 1830s, with miners arriving each day to bring raw gold or pick up newly minted coins. Although Bechtler owned this property, the exact location of his Mint is unknown. Since he moved to Rutherfordton in 1838, the property has been farmed, logged, and bulldozed, and archaeologists searching for the Mint found only old bricks and a handful of cut nails scattered across the ridge. When Thomas Walton was nine years old, he visited Bechtler's Mint, and sixty years later he recalled its unusual floor as a tongued and grooved floor crossed at right angles with strips about 2 1/2 inches wide, slightly raised above the main floor. Bechtler explained that gold particles often escaped while he was weighing, melting, or coining gold, and that the raised slats scraped gold dust from miners' boots so it would fall onto the solid floor below, where he could sweep it up and use it.