Trekfest

[Kohlsdorf] One far off day in the 23rd century, a charismatic and daring future Starfleet captain will be born right here in Riverside, Iowa. Or so the story goes.

[Kohlsdorf] Riverside celebrates that birthday each year at Trek Fest.

[Travis Riggan] Yeah, I would say it's a yearly reunion with Trekkies from all around the country, even sometimes the world. Last year we had 26 different states being present here for our small town event. We're a town of a thousand people, and we bring in an additional 500 to 600 people for our event every single year. It should be on the bucket list of every single Star Trek fan. There's a costume contest. There's a parade that they go through our heart of our town. I would say this is one of a kind.

[Woman in costume on stage] It appears we're having trouble with Tribbles again.

[Man in costume on stage] We are the landing party, party.

[laughter]

[Travis Riggan] So we've had Walter Koenig, who is the original Chekov. We've had Nichelle Nichols, who is Uhura. We've had George Takei, who was Sulu. Shatner came during Invasion Iowa, but it wasn't during Trek Fest. But I mean, our town for two weeks was huge for that. This year we had Dominic Keating, Connor Trinneer, we had Terry Farrell, who's originally from Cedar Rapids, who played Jadzia Dax. I mean, the list goes kind of on and on.

[Kohlsdorf] In 1984, City Councilman Steve Miller had an idea to attract attention to this rural Washington County town. Miller, a Trekkie, had noticed Star Trek author Gene Roddenberry gave his captain, James Tiberius Kirk, a home state, Iowa, but not a hometown. Miller introduced and the City Council adopted a resolution proclaiming Riverside, Kirk's official future place of birth. Since then, countless Trekkies have transported to this community of around a thousand people for the parade, the museum, the costumes, the memorabilia, the encounters, the fraternity, and for Kirk himself.

[Travis Riggan] We're doing this because it's a unique thing, right? It's not because everybody's a Trekkie. It's like what this does for the community and bringing in this business, it's just massive and huge, and the potential is unlimited what we can do with it, so or as one would say, is out of this world, possibly.