8 OCTOBER 3-9, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | 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 Au- rora were born in another country, according to 2023 U.S. Census data; that’s about 22 per- cent 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 rep- resented. 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 de- veloper 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 un- known. Outcelt does note that set- tlers 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 fl ed the town and left it in heavy debt to Denver Water as he searched for wealth in the Colo- rado 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 estab- lished 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 confus- ing 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 lo- cal 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 offi cers, 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 massa- cre 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 earli- est high-profi le 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-profi le terrorist ar- rests at the time. Aurora celebrity and movie connections Fun fact: Lizzo once worked at a King Soopers in Aurora. Bowen Yang — the fi rst Chinese-Amer- ican 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 class- mates 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 Affl eck, may know that Aurora was the original setting of the fi ctitious fi lm that the movie follows. The phony fl ick was based on a script for an actual movie that was set to be fi lmed in Aurora and would have brought a science-fi ction 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 fi lm 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 His- tory 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 mu- nicipalities that stretches across three coun- ties; 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 land- holding 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 Gar- dens and the Broncos stadium to Aurora. But fi rst, 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 prob- ably be the number one or number two city in Colorado over the next decade or two. It’s safer than it’s been.” If Trump Drops In... continued from page 7 Donald Trump clapped when he visited Colorado in 2016. A Venezuelan man displays the real problem at his apartment. BRANDON MARSHALL BENNITO L. KELT Y
