Aurora, CO news and local guide

The town began in 1890 as Fletcher, named for the Denver businessman Donald Fletcher, who staked out four square miles east of Denver as a real estate venture. The Silver Crash of 1893 hit it hard. Fletcher was incorporated on May 5, 1903, but Fletcher himself left town and left the community with a large water debt. In 1907 voters renamed it Aurora, after one of the subdivisions that made up the town, and the post office opened under that name on January 15, 1908. With more than 2,000 people, Aurora was reincorporated as a city on March 9, 1928. It grew slowly in Denver's shadow until the late 1970s and early 1980s, when it was the fastest-growing city in the United States, and it has since passed Denver in land area. The military has shaped the city since Army General Hospital No. 21, later Fitzsimons Army Hospital, opened in 1918. Presidents Harding and Franklin Roosevelt visited it, John Kerry was born there in 1943, and President Eisenhower spent seven weeks there recovering from a heart attack in the fall of 1955. It closed in 1999 and is now part of the University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus. Lowry Air Force Base opened in 1938 and closed in 1994. Buckley Field, built in 1942, is now Buckley Space Force Base, Aurora's largest employer. Sources Wikipedia: Aurora, Colorado