The Amphidrome stood on this site from 1902 until it burned in 1927. Its first hockey game was played on December 29, 1902, when Portage Lake defeated the University of Toronto 13-2. It was home to the Portage Lakes of the International Hockey League, the first professional ice hockey league, and also hosted the agricultural society's annual Copper Country Fair and many other community events. The Houghton Warehouse Company, headed by James R. Dee, who helped organize the International Hockey League in 1904, led the effort to rebuild the Amphidrome, and the replacement building opened in 1927 on the site of the original one. In 1943 it was renamed Dee Stadium. In 1903-04 the Portage Lake Hockey Club became the first hockey team to pay all its players. In March 1904 the club won the U.S. Championship and defeated the Montreal Wanderers in the Houghton Amphidrome in what was billed as the World's Championship. Later that year James Dee and Houghton dentist John "Doc" Gibson, a former hockey player from Ontario, organized the International Hockey League, which began play in December 1904 with teams from Houghton, Calumet, Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, and Pittsburgh. The league lasted three seasons and marked the start of professional hockey.