BY BARBARA GIBSON

THE CITY OF AURORA traces its beginnings to 1891, but its emergence as Colorado’s third largest city began at the end of World War II.

In 1891 Donald K. Fletcher, a Denver real estate tycoon, founded the town of Fletcher. In 1893, after losing his fortune in the silver crash, Fletcher disappeared, leaving the town’s few settlers with bond obligations for nonexistent water. The hoodwinked townspeople renamed the town Aurora.

By 1900, Aurora had a population of only 202. With the opening of Fitzsimons Army Hospital in 1918 and the Denver Municipal Airport in 1929, the population mushroomed by 1930 to 2,295. Aurora post World War II brought it to a population of about 280,000, behind only Denver and Colorado Springs. The opening of Lowry Air Base, Buckley Field, and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal ignited this explosion in growth.

Water is the other feature that helped both to slow and speed up the growth of the city. In 1949 a decision of the Aurora City Council to establish its own water department freed the town from its secondclass status under Denver’s historically restrictive water rule. In 1967, with the completion of the Homestake Water Project, a joint venture with Colorado Springs, Aurora finally had enough water to feed the thirst of the growing population.

Aurora used annexation—a tradition in the growth of Rocky Mountain metropolises—in the late 1950s with the addition of communities such as Hoffman Heights, a 1,705-home subdivision. Such aggressive annexations made Aurora Colorado’s largest city in terms of square miles, and it even attempted to annex Douglas County turf. The merging city looked to grow and expand towards the south and the Denver Tech Center in the late 1970s and 1980s and north towards Denver International Airport into the 1990s. Re-dubbing itself “the Gateway to the Rockies,” Aurora has welcomed thousands of newcomers. After achieving home rule in 1961, Aurora is no longer the suburban stepchild to Denver.

Author and Aurora resident Rebecca Dorward presents the reader with a lively look at the events and characters that shaped this city’s development. Anecdotes and previously unpublished photos, many from Dorward’s personal collection, show the reader many sites and structures long gone. Aurora now has its own landmark commission, of which Dorward is a member, and a growing collection of municipally designated landmarks. The author’s thoughtful treatment of the preservation issues facing the community is one of the bright spots of this book. The struggle to save drive-ins and other twentieth-century landmarks remains an ongoing effort. Dorward does not hide her admiration for Aurora, remarking that it “represents the height of a progressive community.”

What is missing from this volume is one of the more recent struggles facing the community. The town’s roots are tied to the military sometimes with less-than-positive results. There are major environmental problems left by the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. On November 27, 1988, the Rocky Mountain News noted that environmentalists called it “the most polluted place in America.” The author glides over the problem, only mentioning in passing that it has been a Superfund site since 1988. “Now, the clean-up has progressed to the point that a wildlife refuge is being created.” (75) Also missing is any mention of the town’s growing minority population. The 2000 census puts the Latino population at just below 20 percent of the total and the African American population at 13 percent.

The second half of the book showcases many of the prominent organizations and businesses that still exert an impact on the growth and development of the city—a who’s who of twenty-seven businesses and community organizations, old and new, that have strong ties to the community.

Originally the “Gateway City” to the Rockies, Aurora now looks to be its own gateway to the future. Despite its boosterism, Aurora: First Sun of Colorado is a fine introduction to the city and a wonderful memento for those who are already familiar with it.

Barbara Gibson is a local historian whose favorite subject is her neighborhood of LoDo. She’s the author of the Historic Denver Guidebook Lower Downtown and the seventy-five year history of the City Club of Denver. Currently she is working on an M.A. thesis at CU–Denver on the history of Lower Downtown’s transformation from its skid row days to one of America’s most successful historic districts.

Published online August 2002
COLORADO BOOK REVIEW CENTER
www.coloradohistory.org/publications