As 1903 drew to an end, John Senter could sit behind his desk and gaze out the window at the wintery scene beyond his first-floor office in the Phoenix Hotel on Eagle River’s main street. Senter could look back, he could remember. He could recall the time before interior roads linked the mining companies to each other and linked the ranges that extended from Keweenaw Point to the Ontonagon copper district. In fact, had he cared to, Senter could have boasted of being present when the Lake Superior mining district was added to the list of mineral lands under the authority of the U.S. War Department.

Senter was a young man living in his native Keene, New Hampshire, when he left to go west in the company of a man named James A. Wilson. Wilson had recently received an appointment as Surveyor General of mineral lands attached to the Missouri lead district, for political favors rendered to the Whig Party. Wilson’s office was in Dubuque, Iowa, his and young Senter’s destination.

Once there, Senter became an apprentice to Assistant Draughtsman James A. Reid. Not far to the east, in the Galena lead district, was the office of Special Agent to the War Department, Gen. Walter Cunningham, who was in charge of the Galena region, but subordinate to Wilson. Cunningham, another political appointee, was from New York. One of the pioneers of the Galena district was Col. Charles H. Gratiot, whose family had been pioneers in the Missouri lead district and had been involved with the founding of New Orleans. Frequent business brought Gratiot into regular contact with both Wilson and Cunningham.

In March, 1843, just a month after Congress ratified the Treaty of La Pointe, the War Department sent Cunningham a letter in which he was informed that his office had been expanded to include the New Lake Superior mineral lands, which bordered the Chocolate [sic] River on the east, and Duluth on the west. He was ordered to “proceed to the south shore of Lake Superior as quickly” as he could get there, where he was to establish and operate a mineral land agency office.

Cunningham was given a handful of assistants, including Maj. James Campbell, but he asked Wilson if he could take with him James Reid and Senter. Senter said before he went to Lake Superior, he would like to go home briefly and see his family.

Cunningham established the agency at Copper Harbor. But when Senter set out on Lake Superior, he didn’t go to Copper Harbor to report to Cunningham. In stead, he went to the mouth of the Eagle River, where he built a store by the shoreline, and a house about a mile and a mile and a half up the river. Senter’s going to Eagle River was likely on the advice of Col. Gratiot. Gratiot was the agent of the Lake Superior Copper Company, which was mining in the vicinity of where Senter built his home, and the land on which he built his store was on that company’s land, before the property was parceled off for settlement. The lease upon which Gratiot was mining was held by none other than James A. Wilson, Senter’s former boss. Senter, according to a biography written by the Rev. Joseph Ten Broeck, arrived at Eagle River in the summer of 1845, which was about the same time Eagle River was founded by the Lake Superior Company.

The Lake Superior company failed in 1848, and was purchased by investors led by Cyrus Mendenhall, the owner of the schooner “Algonquin.” The mine was renamed the Phoenix Mining Company, which built the Phoenix Hotel in 1853, where Senter later established his office.

Senter continued to be in the right places at the right times. Not long after he arrived at Eagle River, he became the regional sales agent for the DuPont Powder Company, who supplied the local mines with explosives. That put Senter in the position to meet and get to know every agent of every mine, and he witnessed the evolution of the Lake Superior copper district frontier to one of the premier industrial communities of the world.

Senter saw the rise and fall of the Cliff and Minesota mines. He had known Edwin Hulbert, who had his engineering office in Eagle River, and who discovered the Calumet Conglomerate Lode while surveying a section of the Mineral Range State Road between Clifton and Hancock in 1864. The Calumet Mining Company was organized at the same time as the Hecla Mining Company, under the same management in 1867, then merged into one company in 1871.

Senter witnessed the coming of the railroads to the region, and the rise of the Copper Range Company, along with its subsidiary companies, Champion, Trimountain Mining Companies, and the Copper Range Railroad.

In addition to the evolution of the Copper Country, Senter also witnessed the evolution of technology. When the Lake Superior Copper Company operated on Eagle River, the company relied on water power to operate its processing mill, and whims to hoist from its shafts. The Cliff mine, once established, installed boilers and relied on steam to power their Cornish drop stamps and hoists. Senter was still alive when oil lamps were replaced by gas lights. In 1900, the small metropolis of Red Jacket opened an opera house, the same year a brand new street car company ran its first car from Hancock.

John Senter had watched as a raw wilderness turned into a world-class copper producer, and in a way, he had contributed to it. Today, his store is gone, and so is his home. Most, but not all, of what he knew of Eagle River is gone today. The current events he witnessed are today the history we seek and read. But thanks to those like the Rev. Joseph Ten Broeck, we have at least biographical overviews of pioneers like John Senter through whose eyes we can glimpse his time.