The nation celebrated the completion of Interstate 90 in 1978 after the last four miles of freeway were paved near Blue Earth, where officials tinted a small section of pavement gold in a ceremony modeled on the Golden Spike of 1869 and had two Minnesota National Guard trucks meet to symbolize east meeting west on the National Interstate Defense Highway. National and state officials, contractors, Miss America, and area residents gathered at the site of the present Blue Earth Rest Areas, where many received pens inscribed "I-90 Golden Spike Dedication, Sept. 23, 1978," watched a flyover by Minnesota Air National Guard jets, saw the debut of a 56-feet tall replica of the Jolly Green Giant, and then, after a ribbon-cutting attended by 2,500 people, watched a line of vintage cars and trucks cross the gold pavement. Planning for the $256 million project had begun in 1958, and the highway stretched from Boston to Seattle as the nation's longest and northernmost east-to-west, coast-to-coast interstate, promising faster and safer travel even as the interstate system brought both economic growth to some communities and losses to others as business moved away from older highways, with I-90 continuing to shape southern Minnesota. Since its territorial days in the mid-19th century, Minnesota's identity has been rooted in agriculture, as prairies and woodlands attracted settlers from eastern states and other nations, family farms first produced for their own use, and improved transportation and farming methods later supported crops grown for sale. Wheat dominated in the 1870s and 1880s before farmers diversified into more profitable crops, and Minnesota became a leader in sugar beets, turkeys, soybeans, pork, ethanol, sweet corn, peas, and corn. Agriculture also fostered related industries, making Minnesota the flour milling capital of the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through advances in milling technology and later keeping the state at the forefront of food processing and food science, with companies such as General Mills, Pillsbury, Cargill, and Hormel helping make it an agribusiness center. Agriculture has also shaped Minnesota's cultural and political life through county fairs, the Minnesota State Fair, farm organizations including the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry and the cooperative movement, and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, even as recent decades have brought larger consolidated farms and the decline of the small family farm.