Aurora Culture

Aurora’s culture is that of a Western Reserve township that became a suburb, with one large absence at its centre.

The New England pattern

The Connecticut settlers brought a village green, a Congregational church on it and a township organisation, and that layout survives in the older part of town. It is a template repeated across north-east Ohio and is why this region looks and sounds subtly different from the rest of the state — the place names, the church architecture and the town-meeting habits all came from further east.

Remembering the parks

Geauga Lake and Sea World occupy a substantial place in regional memory, and their closure is still a live subject locally. Enthusiast groups have documented the park extensively, several rides were relocated to other parks, and the site’s redevelopment is followed closely.

Cheesedom

The nineteenth-century dairy trade is remembered in local history collections and in the name the area carried when cheese was its export.

Kent State and 1970

Twenty minutes south-east, the shootings at Kent State University on 4 May 1970, in which National Guardsmen killed four students during a protest against the Cambodia incursion, are commemorated by a memorial and a visitor centre. The event is part of the region’s shared history and is taught and marked here rather than treated as distant.

Nearby cultural life

Aurora is small enough that its cultural life is largely borrowed, and close enough that this works: the Blossom Music Center in the valley, Kent State’s museum and theatre programmes, and Cleveland’s orchestra, art museum and theatre district are all within about forty minutes, which is why a town this size supports no institutions of its own and does not need to.