Aurora, Colorado, Is Changing Rapidly, But I’ll Never Stop Loving It

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published Feb 12, 2020

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Dear Aurora,

You are in the midst of a complete transformation. Everything about you is changing before my very eyes, but I can adjust. I can adjust because the things I love about you have lasted across lifetimes. I feel my roots running beneath your streets and your soil in my bones, and though I often find myself disoriented in The New You, I don’t need to look far before something deeply familiar reels me back in.

As for your unwavering aspects, the Rocky Mountains might be the most solid. As present and magnificent as ever, they’ll always face us from the west. To our east, there are the same plains that have spread into the horizon for thousands of years, topped by the same sky, which feels so much closer at your high altitude. The same horizon sends eyes upward and the same landscape has comforted and challenged settlers here for centuries.

I’ve always loved all these familiar things about you—these markers that make you feel like home, but I’m learning to love the unfamiliar as well. Not a day goes by where I’m not alerted to a new restaurant, new brewery, new shop, new park, or even a new neighborhood. Everywhere I look I’m being asked to look again.

There is so much that’s new and shiny and modern happening to you now, but I love that you are still dusty. Still battered by the elements. Still full of weathered brick and rust. You have retained your essential nature: A town beside a city that’s wedged between the mountains and the plains, a community growing and evolving against a backdrop of wide-open spaces. A place filled with people who come together in response to unthinkable tragedy. The essence of what you are is still here, and gentrification doesn’t stand a chance against it.

In fact, it’s not the first time you’ve been “transformed.” That’s what the history of the West is shaped by. “Discovery,” displacement, boom, decline, and flight. Which towns will be ghost towns? Never you, Aurora, because I know your people. These are people who will live in the Denver Metro forever. Families like my own, brought here originally by the military industrial complex on one side, and migrants from Oklahoma on the other. Families who know we’re not indigenous to this land—the people who were truly here first have been largely involuntarily and unjustly removed, and we honor them at every chance. Aurora, you have always welcomed immigrants and refugees. These waves and rushes of “others” and “newcomers” folding themselves into your mix is what has made you you. You’re a city full of the most hopeful, hardy, and receptive kind of people.

Credit: Daniele Dickerson

I love that you’re the ground where my roots grow deepest. I love you because I was born nine miles from you, in Denver, and my grandparents are buried nine miles from you, in Denver. I love you because two miles from where I got my first kiss, I now live with the love of my life as we build our life together. I love you because my daughter is meeting you for the first time, allowing me to see you through her eyes. I love you for your thousands of acres of open space that will remain open, allowing nature into the fabric of our everyday lives. I love that no matter how far I travel or how long I’ve been gone, you always greet me with open arms, and you always feel just right. These are the things that have linked generations to this place—the constant growth that is welcomed and demanded by you.

Credit: Daniele Dickerson

No matter how your skyline changes in the future, and no matter how many people move here from somewhere else, sharing this space with residents who love you as fiercely as I do is an honor. I will always love you, Aurora. And I can’t wait to meet you again and again.

Always,
Daniele

Happy Valentine’s Day! Read more neighborhood love letters here.

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