James R. Dee was born in 1856 in Cliff Mine, Michigan. He was a local businessman who organized the world's first professional hockey league in Michigan's Copper Country and is recognized as the father of professional hockey in the United States. The league featured teams from Calumet, Sault Ste. Marie (Canada), Sault Ste. Marie (Michigan), Pittsburgh, and Portage Lake. "His teams won international championships and laid the foundation for the formation of professional hockey leagues which are thriving in America today" according to the local newspaper on the occasion of his 90th birthday. As a young man, James Dee started working as a telegraph operator. When he attended the 1876 Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia, he saw a demonstration of the telephone and returned home determined to sell this new invention to local businesses. He then went on to organize the Houghton County Electric Light Company, bringing the first electric lights to the county. He was one of the organizers of the Onigaming Yacht Club in 1894 and the Portage Lake Golf Course in 1903. In addition to organizing the first professional hockey league, he also helped organize the Copper Country's first professional baseball league. His interest in winter sports and hockey lead him to promote and organize a company to build the Amphidrome in 1902, the largest enclosed ice rink in the country at the time. When the Amphidrome was destroyed by fire in 1927, Dee took the lead in organizing the financing of construction of the New Amphidrome before the beginning of the next hockey season. This ice rink was purchased by the Michigan College of Mining and Technology (now Michigan Technological University) in 1943 at which time the university named the rink the James R. Dee Stadium. It was sold by the university to the City of Houghton in the 1980s and continues as a municipal ice arena.