Aurora, Illinois Aurora, Illinois Aurora Stolp Island Fox The Fox River and Galena Boulevard dam, Paramount Theatre, Aurora Riverwalk, Civic Center, and Leland Tower Official name: City of Aurora Logo Aurora, Illinois town/city Du - Page County and Kane County Illinois incorporated and unincorporated areas Aurora highlighted.svg Wikimedia Commons: Aurora, Illinois Aurora, a suburb of Chicago, is a town/city dominantly in Kane County and Du - Page County, with portions extending into Kendall and Will counties.
It is the second most crowded city in the state, and the 114th most crowded city in the country. The populace was 197,899 at the 2010 census, and was estimated to have increased to 199,963 by July 2013. Once a mid-sized manufacturing city, Aurora has grown tremendously since the 1960s.
Founded inside Kane County, Aurora's town/city limits and populace have since period into Du - Page, Will, and Kendall counties.
Enumeration Bureau ranked Aurora as the 34th quickest burgeoning city in the United States. From 2000 to 2009, the U.S.
In 1908, Aurora officially adopted the nickname "City of Lights", because it was one of the first metros/cities in the United States to implement an all-electric street lighting fitness in 1881. Aurora's historic downtown is positioned on the Fox River, and centered on Stolp Island.
The town/city is divided into three regions, The West Side, positioned on the west side of the Fox River, The East Side, positioned between the easterly bank of the Fox River and the Kane/Du - Page County line, and the Far East Side/Fox Valley, which is from the County Line to the city's easterly border with Naperville.
The Aurora region is home to an impressive compilation of architecture, including structures by Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Bruce Goff and George Grant Elmslie.
The Hollywood Casino Aurora, a dockside gaming facility with 53,000 square feet (4,900 m2) and 1,200 gaming positions, is positioned on the river in downtown Aurora.
Aurora is also home to a large compilation of Sears Catalog Homes (over 50 homes) and Lustron all-steel homes (seven homes).
5.1 Downtown Aurora Before European pioneer arrived, there was a Native American village in what is today downtown Aurora, on the banks of the Fox River.
Aurora was originally two villages: East Aurora, incorporated in 1845, on the east side of the river, and West Aurora, formally organized on the west side of the river in 1854. In 1857, the two suburbs joined officially, incorporated as the town/city of Aurora. The two sides could not agree which side of the river should home the enhance buildings, so most enhance buildings were assembled on or around Stolp Island in the middle of the Fox River.
As the town/city grew, many factories and jobs came to Aurora.
In 1856, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad positioned its roundhouse and locomotive shop in Aurora to turn into the town's biggest employer until the 1960s. The heavy industries on the East side provided employment for generations of European immigrants.
Aurora became the economic center of the Fox Valley region.
The combination of these three factors a highly industrialized town, a sizeable river that divided it, and the Burlington's shops accounted for much of the dynamics of Aurora's political, economic, and civil history.
It was amid this time that Aurora became a much more culturally diverse city.
In the late 1990s, more evolution began in the non-urban areas and suburbs outside of Aurora.
Subdivisions sprouted up around the city, and Aurora's populace soared.
Today, Aurora is a culturally diverse town/city of around 200,000 residents.
According to the 2010 census, Aurora has an region of 45.799 square miles (118.62 km2), of which 44.94 square miles (116.39 km2) (or 98.12%) is territory and 0.859 square miles (2.22 km2) (or 1.88%) is water. While the town/city has traditionally been regarded as being in Kane County, Aurora also includes parts of Du - Page, Kendall and Will counties.
Aurora is one of only three metros/cities in Illinois that span four counties.
Politically, the town/city is divided into 10 wards. Aurora is generally divided into three regions: Fox Valley, also referred to as the Far East Side, is the portion of Aurora east of the Dupage County line.
The record high for Aurora is 111 F (44 C), on July 14, 1936.
The record low is 33 F ( 36 C), on January 16, 2009. The average high temperature for Aurora in July is 83.5 F (28.6 C), the average January low is 12.6 F ( 10.8 C).
On July 17 18, 1996, a primary flood hit Aurora, with 16.9 inches (430 mm) of precipitation in a 24-hour period, which is an Illinois state record, and the second highest ever nationally.
The flooding was just as bad in Blackberry Creek, on Aurora's far west side.
Aurora has not been hit by any primary tornadoes in recent history, although they occur in Northern Illinois annually.
In 1906, a tornado went through the Aurora Driving Park, a large recreation/amusement park and race track where the Riddle Highlands neighborhood and Northgate shopping center is now located.
Less than ten minutes after passing through Aurora, the storm produced an F5 tornado, which touched down in close-by Oswego, less than 5 miles from downtown.
Aurora was hit with one of the strongest earthquakes ever to strike Illinois, a M 5.1, on May 26, 1909.
Climate data for Chicago Aurora Municipal Airport, Illinois Aurora is on the edge of the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor.
Prominent manufacturers, past and present include Lyon Workspace Products, The Aurora Silverplate Manufacturing Company, Barber-Greene Company, the Chicago Corset Company, the Aurora Brewing Company, Stephens-Adamson Company, Caterpillar Inc., Allsteel Metals, National Metalwares, and Western Wheeled Scraper Works (later Austin-Western Inc.).
The most prominent employer and trade was the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad (later Burlington Northern) which was headquartered in Aurora.
Formed in 1987, the Aurora Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (AACVB) is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to aggressively promoting and marketing the region as a premier overnight destination.
The AACVB'S goal is to movement the economic and surroundingal well-being of a region comprising ten communities: Aurora, Batavia, Big Rock, Hinckley, Montgomery, North Aurora, Plano, Sandwich, Sugar Grove, and Yorkville.
3 West Aurora Public School District 129 1,500 4 East Aurora Public School District 131 1,320 6 City of Aurora 1,280 Aurora's downtown is full of architectural landmarks and historic places.
Aurora also has its own zoo, Phillips Park Zoo, in Phillips Park.
The Paramount Theatre under renovation, downtown Aurora.
Downtown Aurora is home to the Paramount Theatre, a large live performance theater on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Hollywood Casino.
The biggest compilation of commercial buildings by Prairie School architect George Grant Elmslie is here as is the chief building of Aurora Public Library and a branch ground of Waubonsee Community College.
The quarterly Aurora - Art - Walk is hosted by the Cultural Creatives a grassroots team of small-town artist, property owners, patrons and the City of Aurora.
The Riverfront Playhouse is a not-for-profit theater that has held a storefront locale in downtown Aurora since 1978. A fixture of Downtown Aurora, the Waubonsee Community College Campus, which formerly sat on Stolp Island near the Paramount Theatre, has recently[when?] closed, as a new and greatly period ground was assembled on the Western banks of the river, between the river and IL Route 31.
Aurora Regional Fire Museum The Aurora Public Arts Commission Aurora Coliseum / Fox Theater 1900 1915 Changed name to Fox Theater in 1910.
Coliseum Theater 1923 1951 Eighteen town/city blocks from the initial Aurora Coliseum.
This was the most prominent theater in Aurora at the time, but it unfortunately burned down in 1928.
Tivoli was one of Aurora's the more prominent theaters, and competed with the Paramount theater.
Paramount Theatre 1931 The longest lived Aurora theater.
New Fox Theater 1935 1978 A third theater in Aurora for a several decades.
The characters emerged from the tv show Saturday Night Live; one of the initial authors of the skit was from neighboring Naperville, Illinois and thought Aurora had the appropriate blue-collar feel desired for the characters.
Prison Break, a Fox Broadcasting Company TV show has a several references about Aurora, sometimes multiple times in an episode, as the show is filmed in the area.
Casino supporters argue that the casino helped revitalize Aurora after the industrialized recession of the 1980s, and that the city's crime rate had actually decreased decidedly since the 1990s.
The 2002 Film Children on Their Birthdays was filmed in a large Victorian-era home on Aurora's West side, although the story is supposed to have taken place in Alabama.
Bush was the second sitting president to visit Aurora, Illinois on July 7, 2006.
Johnny Depp filmed a scene from one of his movies Public Enemies at Aurora's downtown Paramount Theater.
Aurora was once home to the Aurora Islanders/Blues/Foxes, a minor league baseball charter that played from 1910 to 1915 in the Illinois-Wisconsin League.
Aurora has various youth soccer clubs, most of which have squads represented in the top five percent of the Northern Illinois Soccer League.
Several youth soccer players from Aurora have received college scholarships to primary college soccer programs throughout the U.S.
Fastpitch softball has been in Aurora since the 1930s and attained popularity after World War II when the Aurora Sealmasters Men's team rather than fifth in the country in 1950.
In golf, the Stonebridge Country Club, on Aurora's far northeast side, was home to the LPGA Tour's Kellogg-Keebler Classic from 2002-2004.
High school athletics are a primary event in the city, as East and West Aurora High Schools have been rivals in all sports for over 100 years.
Aurora Transportation Center Pace Suburban Bus operates small-town bus service inside Aurora six days a week (no service on Sundays) and joins to metros/cities such as Naperville, Geneva, Batavia, Oswego, and St.
Metra trains and Pace buses stop at the Aurora Transportation Center.
Aurora City Lines, the old town/city bus lines, was closed in the late 1980s in favor of county-wide bus service.
Aurora also had an extensive streetcar system, directed by the Aurora, Elgin and Fox River Electric Company, that served most neighborhoods.
Aurora was served by a number of interurban lines, the most prominent of which was the Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad which provided service into Chicago.
The Aurora Municipal Airport is a general aviation airport in Sugar Grove, Illinois, just outside Aurora.
Although the airport is positioned inside Sugar Grove, it is owned and directed by the City of Aurora.
The Aurora Airport is designed as a reliever airport for Chicago's O'Hare and Midway Airports and also handles a lot of global cargo.
In addition, the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center is on Aurora's west side.
Aurora has two hospitals, one on the west side, Presence Mercy Medical Center, and one in Fox Valley, Rush Copley Medical Center.
The town/city of Aurora recently completed the old smokestacks from the hospital, as they were starting to crumble.
See also: Public school systems in Aurora, Illinois The town/city is home to Aurora University, two chapters of Waubonsee Community College, and a branch of Rasmussen College.
According to the census of Aurora's populace over the age of twenty-five, 26% hold a bachelor's degree.
Starting in the 1860s, Aurora was served by two chief school systems, one on either side of the Fox River, which physically divides the city.
In the mid-20th century, the precinct on the side of the river period to include the students in the village of North Aurora, including the North Aurorans on the east side of the Fox.
Additionally, in 1972, the Indian Prairie School District (IPSD) 204 was formed to serve the far easterly portion of Aurora inside Du - Page County.
All three districts (Aurora Public Schools: West Side (District 129), Aurora Public Schools: East Side (District 131) and IPSD) have their command posts and administrative offices inside the Aurora town/city limits.
As of 2005, there were at least forty enhance schools inside Aurora town/city limits, serving inhabitants of Aurora and neighboring communities.
Due to the sheer size of the town/city of Aurora, these are not the only three school systems serving inhabitants - some students in the far north end of the town/city (north of I88 in Kane County) attend Batavia enhance schools, some on the far southwest side attend Kaneland CUSD 302 schools (headquartered in Maple Park), and some students in the far south end of the town/city (a small corner of the Kane, Kendall and Will County portions) attend Oswego enhance schools.
Four of the schools in Oswego CUSD 308, Wheatlands Elementary, Homestead Elementary, Wolf's Crossing Elementary, and Bednarcik Junior High are inside Aurora's limits.
While IMSA operates under enhance funds (and uses the site originally designated West Aurora High School North Campus), it is managed autonomously of Aurora's other enhance schools.
Aurora is also home to a several other private schools.
Within Aurora, there are three Roman Catholic High Schools, Aurora Central Catholic (Diocese of Rockford), Rosary, and Marmion Academy (Order of St.
Along with these three schools is Aurora Christian High School and Elementary School.
Aurora is also home to Fox Valley Montessori School, one of the first Montessori schools established in Illinois in 1969, which offers a preschool and elementary program.
The above-named districts have forty-six enhance schools inside the town/city limits of Aurora (seventeen for District #131, thirteen for District #129, eleven for District #204, four for Oswego District #308 and the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy).
The Aurora Public Library includes the chief library, two chapters, an express center, a support facility and a bookmobile.
Main article: List of citizens from Aurora, Illinois In addition to the Chicago broadcast stations, the following are based in Aurora: The Beacon News is Aurora's earliest business, first presented in 1846, and is part of the Chicago Tribune Media Group.
The journal has two editions: the Aurora version and the Kendall County edition.
In 2008, reported primary crimes in Aurora were at their lowest level in nearly three decades. The Chief of Police attributed the drop to a number of factors but especially credited the difficult work of the city's police officers and the increase in anti-gang before ities.
Gang violence had reached a high in the 1990s, with the town/city averaging nearly 30 murders per year. In 2008, Aurora only had 2 murders. In July 2007, the Aurora Police Department and the FBI conducted "Operation First Degree Burn," a sweep that resulted in the prosperous arrest of 31 alleged Latin Kings gang members suspected of 22 murders dating back to the mid-1990s. Aurora has also adopted programs such as Cease - Fire to reduce gang violence and prevent youths from joining gangs.
Like other large Midwestern metros/cities that once relied on manufacturing as an economic basis, Aurora has a large number of abandoned buildings and vacant lots, especially in older sections of the city.
Environmentally, Aurora has long dealt with pollution of the Fox River.
On September 26, 2014, a fire at an air traffic control edifice in Aurora (also known as the "Chicago Center") caused nearly 2000 airline flights to be grounded. Former chief Aurora Public Library, remodeled c.
Statue outside of the Aurora Transportation Center, Aurora (Metra).
"Aurora (city), Illinois".
Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: City of Aurora "The quickest burgeoning US cities: Cities ranked 1 to 100".
City of Aurora, IL.
"Aurora Township, Kane County, Illinois".
The Burlington Railroad ran passenger trains between Chicago and Aurora for over 100 years since Aurora was an meaningful suburb.
City of Aurora CAFR a b c "Aurora On Track For Another Crime Decline".
City of Aurora, IL.
"Illinois EPA Director presents $300,000 grant to Mayor of Aurora for watershed protection accomplishments".
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Aurora, Illinois.
Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Aurora, Illinois.
Wikisource has the text of a 1911 Encyclop dia Britannica article about Aurora, Illinois.
Aurora Area Convention and Visitors Bureau Aurora, Illinois in the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago Wikisource-logo.svg "Aurora, a town/city of Kane county, Ill.".
Aurora, Illinois Articles and topics related to Aurora, Illinois
Categories:
Aurora, Illinois - 1834 establishments in Illinois - Chicago urbane region - Cities in Illinois - Cities in Du - Page County, Illinois - Cities in Kane County, Illinois - Cities in Kendall County, Illinois - Cities in Will County, Illinois - Populated places established in 1834
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