At the dawn of the nineteenth century, resourceful pioneers carved a small community out of the wilderness in far western New York State. An agent of the Holland Company opened the way by surveying a road from Big Tree Indian Reservation to Lake Erie in 1803. One mile section of that road today is Main Street, East Aurora. A year later, a man named Jabez Warren obtained a contract for 1,443 acres of land, which makes up a large part of the Town of Aurora. The earliest settlers arrived, cleared the forests, farmed the land, harnessed the waterpower, and built mills. Their efforts and the richness of the land formed the foundation of a town that in years to come provided food and materials for the the city of Buffalo and nearby areas. Town of Aurora: 1818-1930, presents more than a century of the history of this vibrant community. It includes some notable people and places. In the spring of 1823, young attorney Millard Fillmore opened the first law office in town--twenty-seven years before he became the nation's thirteenth president. In 1832, Aurora Academy, the most celebrated institution of learning in western New York, was incorporated. By the 1890s, Hamlin Village Farm, and Jewett's Stock Farm were world famous for the breeding of harness race horses. In 1895, Elbert Hubbard established the arts and crafts community of the Roycrofters, which flourished into the 1930s.

Despite a century of history, and the valiant efforts of all those who believed the town would last forever, Aurora, Nevada, is now and forevermore a "Colossal Wreck" slowly returning to its beginnings-a sagebrush and pinyon pine covered valley home to jackrabbits and a few ghosts from the past. While Aurora is gone, its historical record remains, thus providing us the opportunity to reconstruct the town and its society if only in our imagination. Most historical accounts about Aurora have focused on the town during its early 1860s mining boom. However, Aurora's rich and colorful history deserves a closer look. This new reference-oriented publication includes hundreds of edited and annotated newspaper clippings and other firsthand accounts about Aurora's buildings, businesses, major mines, social life, Paiute citizens, ghost town days, and final destruction over the entire length of its century-long history. It also includes directories for the boom years 1864, 1880, and 1915, as well as 6 maps and over 150 photographs, many of which are "then and now" comparisons of the same view.

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM NETFLIX AND ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING DIRECTOR KATHRYN BIGELOW “Fantastic story, a real page-turner. Impossible to put down." – Stephen King From the author of Cold Storage comes a riveting, eerily plausible thriller, told with the menace and flair of Under the Dome or Project Hail Mary, in which a worldwide cataclysm plays out in the lives of one complicated Midwestern family. In Aurora, Illinois, Aubrey Wheeler is just trying to get by after her semi-criminal ex-husband split, leaving behind his unruly teenage son. Then the lights go out—not just in Aurora but across the globe. A solar storm has knocked out power almost everywhere. Suddenly, all problems are local, very local, and Aubrey must assume the mantle of fierce protector of her suburban neighborhood. Across the country lives Aubrey’s estranged brother, Thom. A fantastically wealthy, neurotically over-prepared Silicon Valley CEO, he plans to ride out the crisis in a gilded desert bunker he built for maximum comfort and security. But the complicated history between the siblings is far from over, and what feels like the end of the world is just the beginning of several long-overdue reckonings—which not everyone will survive . . . Aurora is suspenseful storytelling—both large scale and small—at its finest.