Aurora started out as a town named Fletcher, named for Donald Fletcher who was the first developer to stake out a claim in the area. Fletcher and his partners staked out 4 square miles east of Denver in the 1880's but their project almost collapsed with the Silver Crash of 1893. Fletcher & Co. skipped town, leaving the fledgling community with a large water debt. The residents decided to rename the town Aurora in 1907 and it slowly began to grow. In the late 1970's and early1980's, Aurora was the fastest growing city in the United States. However, as big as Aurora is now, the city still suffers from its lack of a historically important central business district and it looks more like a big conglomeration of suburbs.

In 1999, the Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center was decommissioned. The property was bought by Phillip Anschutz and is now the Anschutz Medical Campus of the University of Colorado Denver and the Colorado Bioscience Park Aurora. The campus also includes the University of Colorado Hospital which was moved to Aurora from Denver in 2007.