Aurora Americanus: Visiting Every Place Named ‘Aurora’ in the US.
In 2019, I visited every town or city named Aurora in the United States. And one in Ontario, for good measure.
Depending on how you count, there are as many as 27 Auroras in existence today. They are found on both coasts and from Minnesota to Texas, but tend to favor the North for reasons I discovered as I traveled. In addition to those 27, there is Aurora, Nevada (which was once Aurora, California)—a ghost town, with no population. I did visit because it’s an important part of the “Aurora” story. I also visited Aurora, Ontario to contrast with the US Auroras.
That’s 29 total. Of those, I visited 21. The other 8 were rejected because they lacked any discernible identity. Aurora, Arkansas is an area with no town. Aurora, Alaska is a suburban neighborhood of Fairbanks. Aurora, New Mexico is less than a ghost town.
I looked for places with Wikipedia pages and ZIP codes. I didn’t follow this rule perfectly, and I’ve been criticized for leaving off Wisconsin (I’m not dead yet), but I’m content with the group chosen. It is comprehensive.
The 21 I did visit covered a vast swath of the country. I list them here for context, in order of visit:
Missouri
Texas
Minnesota
South Dakota
Iowa
West Virginia
Maine
New York (1)
New York (2)
Ohio
Nebraska
Colorado
Utah
Nevada
Kansas
Kentucky
Ontario
Oregon
North Carolina
Illinois
Indiana
I live in Chicago. If this order seems odd, it helps to note that I travel for work and I used that travel as opportunities to get to these places. I had business in the Dallas area, so that gave me my first leg. And then in Minneapolis, which gave me leg 2. And then Rhode Island, giving me leg 3. And so on.
The vast majority of this travel was done in a 2014 Nissan NV200 cargo van converted into a camper. I covered about 20,000 miles this summer, spending about six weeks’ worth of nights sleeping at Walmarts, free campgrounds, trail heads and once on a salt plain in a desert.
It was all done alone, with the exception of Aurora, Colorado where friends helped me understand this largest of all Auroras.
But the question you’re probably asking at this point is: Why “Aurora?” And “Why do this?”
The “Aurora” part has to do with a buddy of mine named Clem. Clem describes himself as a “Professional Asshole.” His full name is Clem Snide, though that’s likely a pseudonym. He asked me for a ride one day in Chicago and we’ve since been on several road-tripping adventures together. I learned he’s from Horse Cave, Kentucky and that he lived in the Kowloon district of Hong Kong during the early 70s. He’s wary of the law and seems to know his away into—and out of—trouble.
A couple of years ago, he joined me on a trip to Denver to visit a dear friend who was celebrating a birthday. I knew of a free campground in Aurora, Nebraska that I liked to stay in. (I’ll discuss this in depth when we get to the Nebraska part). Looking at the map, I noticed that we’d be going through (or near) Auroras in Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Colorado.
We decided that Clem needed a picture from each one. And I now have a collection of images of Clem sitting in front of “Welcome to Aurora” signs in five different states.
I should note that Clem has some challenges. For one thing, he’s an invertebrate: he has no spine. Nor does he have any other bones of any kind. Or internal organs. In fact, to break the fourth wall completely, Clem is a dummy with a “old man” rubber mask and an attitude to match.
Clem did not join me the Aurora Americanus trip. There really wasn’t space for him, and rumor has it that he’s somewhere in Mexico. But travels with Clem were the genesis for the “Aurora” concept.
But that wasn’t all of it. Having built the camper over the winter, I wanted a project where I’d travel a lot and see interesting things. I also didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so the free campground in Aurora, Nebraska came to mind. And then my previous trip with Clem came to mind and then, the “a-ha!” moment. I should visit every Aurora.
And the more I thought about it, the more perfect it was. It was a challenge—a crazy one. So many miles. How could I get to Oregon and North Carolina? And Maine? All the way up by Bangor?
So I looked at other city names. Springfield, à la The Simpsons? Salem? (I grew up in Salem, Massachusetts and went to school in Salem, West Virginia so this made some sense). But the more I thought about it, the more perfect Aurora was.
First, there were enough Auroras to make into a project. Second, they were distributed all across the country, if favoring the North a bit. And third, consider the word “Aurora.” What images does it conjure? And why would you name a place that? It’s a word of curiosity, of hope, of something shiny that’s just out of reach. And indeed, I came to learn that many of the Auroras were named so precisely for those reasons.
But there was another reason to do such a project. Our national narrative is currently dominated by a battle between teams Red and Blue. Politics pervades every conversation, and in those where it’s not front and center, it’s lurking like a viper threatening to strike at the slightest slip of the tongue. Social media has given us a way to build our own comfortable bubbles, where we can ignore all other input as we cast aspersions at those we don’t agree with. But who are “the others?” Where do they live and what’s it like in their world? What if we took a look at different communities, and ignoring politics as much as possible, put ourselves in their shoes and considered things from their perspective? Is it even possible?
This project is going to find out. And what follows is 21 different stories from many different places across the country. Ontario excepted, all these towns and cities are full of Americans. And they’re all Aurorans. And yet, they live vastly different realities.
My journey is complete, but I invite you to join me as I relive it, place by place, and learn what living in Aurora is like today and how similar or different it is from where you live. I was surprised at what I found, and I think you will be too.