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(Photo courtesy Mike McCandless)
SALT LAKE CITY -- If you go to the new "Star Trek" film this weekend, you'll be seeing Utah scenery. Spock's homeland Vulcan was shot in Emery County, in an area called San Rafael Swell in eastern Utah.
Emery County Economic Director Mike McCandless said the crew spent five days at the reef. He said the area had, "a significantly uplifted section of sandstone rocks that are very jagged and rough in nature, it's very arid."
The reef area is designated as wilderness. "And that was also something very attractive on the filming side because you had an area where they wouldn't have to, you know, digitally edit out roads," he said.
And it seems the crew couldn't get enough of the scenery. "[They were] almost begging me to stay because they wanted to find more stuff."
The county saw $100,000 in direct benefit, but McCandless expects interest in the area to peak because of what happened after the movie "Galaxy Quest."
He said, "We still, to this day, continue to get requests for people to come to Goblin Valley because of a 5 minute scene in that movie."The area was selected because it worked well with the set in California at Vasquez Rocks.
The San Rafael Swell is located about 12 miles from the town of Green River.
E-mail: sworsley@ksl.com