Josephine Sather

The house and fox farm of Josephine Sather while she lived on Nuka Island

NPS Photo/B Rice

Quick Facts

Significance:

Operated a fox farm on a remote island

Place of Birth:

Austria

Place of Death:

Austria

Date of Death:

October 13, 1964

“My mind was made up almost from the start – a free outdoor life, one with Nature spread out all around me, was the lure that promised to make the undertaking a desirable one.”

Inspired by the high prices of fox, Josephine Sather and her husband started a fox farm on an Island, in the gulf of Alaska, in 1921.  Together with another partner, Charles Dustin, they established a fox farm on Nuka Island, which is near the Southwestern edge of Kenai Fjords National Park.  For the first few years, the fox farm was a success.  Josephine was involved with all aspects of the farm, from carrying heavy food packs around the island to feed the foxes, to preparing the fox skins for market, “I’m the only one that…really can prepare the skins for the market.  The skinning of a fox is not…of an animal is nothing.”

A few years after establishing the successful Fox farm, Josephine’s husband Ed passed away due to cancer.  Maintaining the fox farm by herself became more of a struggle, and after a couple of years taking that on herself, she found herself in debt.  Josephine didn’t want to sell the farm, so instead she accepted a proposal from a “Herring” Pete Sather, a captain that served many of the remote coastal communities in Southwest Alaska.
  
While running the fox farm took up much of Josephine’s time, she still made time to enjoy the beautiful area she called home.  Josephine had many adventures around Nuka Island, including having to outrace a whale! “Already I could see what was coming- a huge whale, right toward me with the speed and force of a power boat!  If I had not seen it, I could never have believed such a thing…My only hope was to reach the rocks before he got to me.  Instead of working his way toward the mainland side, he was heading more and more in my direction.  Hard as I rowed, my skiff seemed as though it were standing still.  Then that eighty-ton monster passed me not more than two hundred yards away.  I was about a hundred yards from the rocks, and the commotion he made in the sea was so great that my skiff was soon bobbing up and down like a cork.  I had all I could do to keep it from capsizing.  Whe-e-ew!!  That was the closest call I ever had!  One experience like that will do me for a lifetime, although I must admit it was the grandest close-up of a whale I could hope to have.  As soon as I knew I was safe and could breather easily again, I watched that whale’s steady performance as far as I could see…Yes it’s an isolated life I chose for myself; but so long as I may live, it’s the life for me!”