A car accident near the set of the latest installment in the Star Trek franchise revealed filming is taking place for the film in Bakersfield, California according to reports at SyFy Portal.

The reason for the filming is that Bakersfield is being used to simulate Captain James T. Kirk’s boyhood home of Iowa for scenes in the film.

“We wanted something that looked like Iowa, and we also wanted to stay close to Los Angeles,” executive producer Jeffrey Chernoz told a local TV station covering the story. “So, we came out here and scouted and realized that we can kind of make Iowa out of Bakersfield.”

Creating the future home for Kirk isn’t the first time the California town has been used for filming. It served as the fictional town of Jericho on the TV series of the same name and portions of The Running Man were filmed there.

“We often market ourselves as Hollywood’s back lot to the north,” said Rick Davis, a member of the Kern County Board of Trustees, about Bakersfield. “We’ve also been very proud of the fact that if you were going to shoot a movie in Maine and end up in Los Angeles, every scene you would need, we have here in Kern County.”

The filming will provide a $2 million influx into the Kern County economy, Davis said, from local casting of extras and other expenses.

The next installment of the Star Trek franchise is set to hit theaters in April of 2009.