James Rasewarn purchased the Eagle Harbor Hotel in the year of 1881. He was born in Cornwall, England, on July 7, 1835, and was brought up by a miner. He came to the United States in 1854, working in New Jersey for one year. In 1855, he moved to the Lake Superior region and worked for eight months at the Flint Steel mine, as well as in the Douglass Houghton, Toltec and Evergreen mines. After a brief four-year trip to England, Brazil and South America, he returned to the United States and located at the Central mine, where he worked for three and a half years as a copper miner, and then worked at the Copper Falls mine for eight years. During the fall of 1880, he moved to Eagle Harbor, and in June 1881 leased the Eagle Harbor Hotel, purchasing it during the same year.