When the Tyler League of Women Voters was asked to show the best of East Texas to a group of Russian delegates from the Open World Leadership Center, they knew just where to take them.

Caddo Lake -- and the Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge.

Although the Army still has not completed final transfer of lands to the refuge, and the Army still maintains a locked gate, arrangements were made for the visitors to tour last Sunday.

They were the first visitors from the former Soviet Union to visit the site where international history was made. Soviet inspectors lived and worked at Longhorn to certify the destruction of Pershing missle motors -- part of a reciprocal nuclear disarmament reached by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War -- and it happened on the shores of Caddo Lake."