Son of Gene Roddenberry visits town of Vulcan, Alberta, Canada

Source: CTV

This is a particularly interesting story for me because I've been to this town before. We used to take day trips around the province close to Calgary, generally going to places like Drumheller, Banff, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and so on, and I would bring out the map to take a look at each town, check its population, and tell everybody when we were going to arrive. Lots of fun. One day we were going down towards Lethbridge and decided to stop at the town of Vulcan since it had quite the interesting name (parents are also Star Trek fans). That was back in elementary so all I remember is that there was a tiny downtown and hospital, and I concluded that only the name was interesting but that it had nothing to do with Star Trek. Who knows, maybe the rest of the family saw something that I didn't and only I thought it was a regular town.

But it turns out that the town is a big Trek town, it has a Enterprise replica, a museum, and now it has a plaque to Gene Roddenberry. They're also hoping to have the new Star Trek movie premiered there:

The son of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry boldly went to a town most haven't gone before, to launch Vulcan, Alberta's annual Spock Days and Galaxyfest.

Eugene Roddenberry Jr. attended the event, which is in its 15th year, to unveil a plaque in his father's memory.

The town of 2,000 usually doubles in size with people dressed as Vulcans, Klingons and Red Shirts gathering to celebrate all that is "Star Trek".

"It was beautiful. It's a tasteful and classy thing they did," Roddenberry said. "I appreciated the town of Vulcan for doing it."

The town was originally named after the Roman god of fire, but when the popularity of the seminal sci-fi show soared the town embraced its name.

and:

Vulcan, Alta. is famed for its large model of the original USS Enterprise within the town.

"I've never seen an entire town that has converted itself into a Star Trek universe," Roddenberry said. "I'm shocked by it and I love it."

lastly:

The town is hoping that their devotion to the series will convince the producers of the new "Star Trek" film to premiere it in Vulcan.

The 11th film in the series, a reboot of the original franchise that is being produced and directed by "Lost" mastermind J.J. Abrams, is slated to be released in May 2009.

So where exactly is Vulcan? Right here:



It takes about an hour by car from Calgary (that orange dot just to the northwest). Here's the town's website, also designed as a Starfleet computer.

Edit: Oh wait, their YouTube video says they didn't make the Enterprise replica until 1995. It was a Trek town before then but sans replica. So that's why we didn't see anything.