Aurora

City in three counties (Arapahoe, Adams, and Douglas) in central Colorado, USA, 10km/6mi east of Denver, of which it is mainly a residential suburb; population (2000 est) 276,400. Founded in 1891 as Fletcher, it was renamed after the Roman goddess of the dawn when it was incorporated as a city in 1907. It is the third city of Colorado, after Denver and Colorado Springs. Its industries include telecommunications and aerospace equipment, fishing tackle, and travel goods. Aurora is a main gateway to winter-sports centres and other tourist attractions in the Rocky Mountains.

A community college, Lowry Air Force Base, and Fitzsimons Army Hospital are located here.

Aurora

City in Kane and Du Page counties, northeast Illinois, USA; population (2000) 143,100. It is located on the Fox River, 60 km/37 mi west-southwest of Chicago. An important regional economic centre, it manufactures and distributes such products as auto parts, office furniture and equipment, electrical and pneumatic tools, clothing, pumps, toys, tractors, and road paving machinery. Local institutions include Aurora University (1893) and the Bellarmine School of Theology of Loyola University.

Aurora was founded in 1834 as McCarty's Mills, a fur trading post and sawmill near a Potawatomi village; it was incorporated as a city in 1857. An important stagecoach stop on the road leading west from Chicago, it boomed when the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad built its construction and repair yards here in the 1850s. Aurora was a pioneer in the use of electric streetlights (1881).