What Riverside is known for

Riverside is an Iowa town of 1,060 people at the 2020 census, about 12 miles south of Iowa City in the English River Valley. In March 1985 its city council voted to proclaim Riverside the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, a character from Star Trek. The town renamed its annual River Fest as Trekfest, and later built a museum and a monument on the claim.

The land before the claim

The land had a longer history first. In 1832 the Black Hawk Purchase, a cession by the Sauk and Meskwaki, opened the area to non-Native settlement for $640,000. Meskwaki communities then relocated to the Iowa River valley; one village, led by Totokonock, stood at the mouth of the English River, about twelve miles south of Iowa City, close to Riverside’s own ground. Riverside itself was established in 1872 and incorporated in 1882, named for its place on the English River at the suggestion of a Dr. Ott.

A council vote, a monument, a warning

On March 25, 1985, council member Steve Miller moved that Riverside proclaim itself Kirk’s future birthplace. It passed unanimously, and Miller offered to pay any legal costs. The Cedar Rapids Gazette ran the story on its front page two days later, and wire services, the New York Times and the BBC picked it up; Roddenberry called it a very enterprising idea. Paramount warned the town in 1985 that it could not claim to be Kirk’s birthplace, but Riverside kept going anyway. The original monument stood behind Steve Miller’s barber shop; in June 2021 it moved a block east, beside city hall. It gives Kirk’s birth date as March 22, 2228, though the franchise later settled on March 22, 2233.

The museum, the statue and Invasion Iowa

The Voyage Home Riverside History Center opened in 2008 and is run by volunteers; it is free to enter and holds both local history and Star Trek exhibits. Among them is an uncashed four dollar check William Shatner wrote for coffee and doughnuts during a 2004 visit. A bronze statue of Kirk, funded partly by hotel and motel tax grants and costing about $30,000, was unveiled on June 30, 2018, and now stands in Railroad Park.

In September 2004, Shatner and two producers had already staged a fake film shoot in town, broadcast the next year as Invasion Iowa. The producers paid Riverside $100,000 for municipal services, and Mayor Jim Poch called learning the truth a low point in his life. Riverside kept its claim anyway, and in 2023 the series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds put Kirk’s hometown on screen as Riverside for the first time.