If Trump really follows through, we have a few suggestions for what he's gotta do while he's visiting Aurora.
Known for its cultural richness and diversity, Aurora has long served as a major landing spot for immigrants and other Colorado newcomers who share their life stories through food, art, local passions and work. Over the past two months, though, the city has become known for a certain group of immigrants in particular.
The influx of Venezuelan migrants who started flooding Denver in December 2022 — part of an estimated 43,000 immigrants to come to the metro area over the past 22 months, though many have moved on — inevitably spilled into Colorado's third-largest city. Many became residents of three apartment complexes owned by CBZ Management, including Aspen Grove at 1580 Nome Street, which had first been cited by the City of Aurora for code violations back in early 2020, long before Venezuelan migrants came to the area.
As CBZ kept racking up citations from the city, earning owner Zeb Baumgarten an August court date, its lawyers and an out-of-state PR firm suggested that things had gotten out of hand because the complexes were controlled by Venezuelan gangs. Ultimately, the court date was dropped with the stipulation that CBZ sell Aspen Grove.
In the meantime, though, Trump picked up the narrative, suggesting in the September 10 debate that the entire city was controlled by Venezuelan gangs, a charge vehemently denied by Todd Chamberlain, Aurora's new police chief, its sixth in five years and a veteran of America's top gang city. Chamberlain has since charged one of CBZ's other Aurora apartment complexes with being a public nuisance and the city has set a deadline of October 14 to come up with a plan to get it under control.
Although his vice-presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, is confirmed for a private fundraiser in metro Denver on October 8, Trump, who had his own fundraiser in Aspen in August, has not yet confirmed a date for his visit to Aurora. Last fall, six Coloradans sued to keep him off the ballot because of his actions on January 6, 2020, protesting the outcome of the last presidential election.
"I hope he doesn't bring with him an element of lawlessness or people that are causing trouble," cautions Governor Jared Polis in one of several statements regarding Trump's promise to parachute into the state. "Obviously, we welcome anybody to the city of Aurora, to Colorado, but obviously, we worry about some of the criminal elements that he brings with him. He's a convicted felon himself, and a lot of people who associate with him might engage in acts of terror against the residents of Aurora."
If Trump really parachutes into Aurora, here are some things he should know about this city:
It lives up to its slogan, "The World in a City"
An estimated 90,000 people living in Aurora were born in another country, according to 2023 U.S. Census data; that's about 22 percent of the population. Most of these foreign-born residents, about 37,000 people, are from Mexico. More than 7,000 are from East Africa, including over 3,000 from Ethiopia. Close to 20,000 Aurorans come from Asia, including more than 2,000 from Korea, 2,400 from India and about 2,800 from Vietnam. At least a thousand residents list Russia as their birthplace; just as many come from Burma or El Salvador. Germany, Thailand, Kenya and several other countries are all represented. All told, more than 160 languages are spoken in Aurora, which lives up to its slogan: "the world in a city."
How Aurora got its name
Colorado's third-largest municipality originated as a subdivision of the town of Fletcher, an area built up by real estate developer Donald Fletcher with help from the state's silver boom, explains Keith Outcelt, education curator for the Aurora History Museum.
The subdivision of Aurora was incorporated into Fletcher in 1891, but who, exactly, suggested the name Aurora — which is Latin for "dawn" and the name of the Roman goddess of dawn — is unknown. Outcelt does note that settlers from Fletcher's native Illinois likely suggested it in reference to the Aurora in that state.
When the price for Colorado silver began to crash in 1893, Fletcher fled the town and left it in heavy debt to Denver Water as he searched for wealth in the Colorado Rockies and then California, where he would live out the rest of his days.
Devastated by the departure of its founder, the town decided to wipe his name from its history books and adopted the name of Aurora in 1907. When the population grew past 2,000 people in 1928, the Colorado Secretary of State bestowed city status on it, rechristening it as the City of Aurora.
Aurora also has a few nicknames
"A-Town" is an older and more established nickname, one that can be found in headlines of the Aurora Sentinel — the city's paper of record — as well as restaurant names (like the now-closed A-Town Pizza), and in reference to Downtown A-Town, the original downtown area on East Colfax near Fletcher Plaza.Then there's "ACO," which can get confusing because Aurora is in both Arapahoe and Adams counties (as well as Douglas!); adding to the confusion is the use of "Jeffco" as a name for Jefferson County. ACO is popular with local rappers and even has an entry in the Urban Dictionary, but it is used more by businesses and organizations, like the ACO House.
Denverites and irreverent Aurorans have also been known to call the city "Saudi Aurora."
While some people interpret this as a racist way of noting the city's relatively large population of Arab-speaking immigrants, Aurorans clarify that it actually has to do with the landscape and how the area can feel desert-like due to a lack of trees and the "300 days of sunshine" that everyone always talks about.
Aurora has seen some truly devastating crime
The Aurora Police Department is still dealing with fallout from the death of Elijah McClain in August 2019, which led to the criminal conviction of one of its officers, as well as a paramedic. Charges of racist behavior by the APD is one of the reasons Chamberlain was brought in from L.A.Many Aurorans are still recovering from the trauma of the 2012 movie theater massacre that left twelve dead and injured seventy, making it one of the country's most notorious mass shootings. Nearly two decades before, the 1993 Chuck E Cheese shooting saw four employees killed in one of the country's earliest high-profile mass shootings.
And in a strange sidelight, Aurora resident Najibullah Zazi was arrested in 2009 for conspiring to bomb the New York subway in one of the most high-profile terrorist arrests at the time.
Aurora celebrity and movie connections
Fun fact: Lizzo once worked at a King Soopers in Aurora.Bowen Yang — the first Chinese-American cast member of Saturday Night Live — moved to the city when he was nine and went to Smoky Hill High School; at the time, his parents sent him to a counselor to persuade him he was not gay. (It didn't work.) Comedian Dan Soder, who was on the show Billions, was raised in Aurora and went to Smoky Hill — where he was classmates and good friends with future Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel — just a few years before Yang.
Fans of the Oscar-winning movie Argo, directed by and starring Ben Affleck, may know that Aurora was the original setting of the fictitious film that the movie follows. The phony flick was based on a script for an actual movie that was set to be filmed in Aurora and would have brought a science-fiction theme park to the city if it hadn't been scrapped.
Film geeks may also know that Aurora was the setting for the 1979 cult classic Over the Edge. The movie, about youth violence, marked Matt Dillon's film debut.
Aurora is in three counties
When Donald Fletcher was developing the town that would later bear his name, he chose a prime piece of real estate on Colfax Avenue as its center."Colfax is how most people would have come into Denver at the time," explains the Aurora History Museum's Outcelt. "That was just the main way for people to come in at the time. It's right there on this thoroughfare."
However, Colfax was already the dividing line for two counties: Adams and Arapahoe. As a result, the town of Fletcher — and later the City of Aurora — straddled the border of these two counties. It continued to develop to the south and east, eventually growing into Douglas County, as well.
Now Aurora is one of just two Colorado municipalities that stretches across three counties; the other is Littleton, which is located in Arapahoe, Douglas and Jefferson counties.
Denver may one day look at Aurora as the one that got away, as the two cities were almost joined in 1897, when Fletcher landholding residents voted to allow annexation, according to Outcelt.
Aurora sought to be incorporated into Denver, "but Denver never jumped at it," he says.
"I have not seen any record of this being denied by Denver, or even taken up by their city council," Outcelt adds. "In any case, it didn’t happen."
Aurora won't stop growing, and aims to rival Denver
Aurora was home to only 200 people in 1900. It's seen consistent growth every decade since then and is projected to be as big as Denver is now by 2070. The city has a population of 404,000 people and has more than 300,000 registered voters, including 260,000 in Arapahoe County, 50,000 in Adams County and 4,000 in Douglas County. With Denver's population in decline, the idea of Aurora eclipsing the Mile High City looks more possible than ever.
Mayor Mike Coffman — a Republican who lost his congressional seat in 2018 and was mocked as "Little Mikey" by Trump at the time — is very much aware of his city's potential, and aims to leverage the fact that Aurora has more land than Denver. The Aurora mayor has eyed moving Elitch Gardens and the Broncos stadium to Aurora. But first, he might need to get a grip on his own communications, which led to much of the controversy over the past two months — controversy that Colorado's governor is now trying to tamp down.
“What a lot of Americans need to know is Aurora is over 400,000 people," Polis told the nation on Face the Nation September 23. "It’s Colorado’s third-largest city. Violent crime is down two years in a row. Car thefts are down two years in a row. It’s a wonderful city. I’m there all the time. It’s really a great, diverse city, and it’s growing fast. It’ll probably be the number one or number two city in Colorado over the next decade or two. It’s safer than it’s been.”
For more on Aurora, see our story on the Aurora rapper who's taking on Trump.
This piece includes history sections from a November 2023 Westword story. Keep watching westword.com for updates on Aurora today...and the possibility of a visit from the former president. Meanwhile, read our article about an Aurora rapper who wrote a response to Donald Trump.
