“Dean of the Alcan Highway” was the nickname given to Albert Herda of Minot after he became the first trucker to haul commercial freight from the Upper Midwest to Alaska over the Alaska-Canadian Highway in 1947. The Alaska, or Alcan, Highway had been built in only 8 months in 1942 and 1943, by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in order to counter a possible Japanese overland invasion in World War II. Spanning 1,450 miles from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Fairbanks, Alaska, across 5 mountain