In 1990, workers installed a three-by-six-foot aluminum highway sign reading “Mississippi River” in Russian on the I-94 Dartmouth bridge between St. Paul and Minneapolis. It had been prepared by the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s sign shop in Oakdale for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to the Twin Cities on June 3. Gorbachev’s motorcade passed the sign on that day as he and his wife, Raisa, began a historic visit that established a friendly relationship between the Soviet Union and the North Star State and signaled the approaching end of the Cold War.