Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Aurora, NC

Aurora is a town in Beaufort County on the south side of the Pamlico River, and the 2020 census counted 455 residents there.

Aurora's population has fallen about 35 percent over 40 years, from a high of 698 in 1980 to 520 in 2010 and 455 in 2020, as younger residents have left the area.

Just outside town sits the huge Aurora phosphate mine, one of the largest phosphate mining operations in the world; now run by Nutrien, it is Beaufort County's largest employer, with about 1,200 employees and contractors combined.

Phosphate prospectors identified the rich ore body under and around Aurora in the late 1950s, and Texasgulf began full-scale mining in December 1965, shipping its first phosphate products in April 1966.

Aurora is home to the Aurora Fossil Museum, which displays marine fossils collected from the local phosphate mine — including megalodon shark teeth — from the Miocene, Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, and visitors can dig for fossils in the museum's fossil pit.

Aurora has a mild coastal climate, averaging about 51.6 inches of rain a year and only about 0.2 inches of snow, according to NOAA's 1991–2020 climate normals for the area.

At the 2000 census Aurora had 583 residents living in 265 households, and local children attend S. W. Snowden School, a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school in town, before going on to Southside High School.

Former NBA player Richard Coffey, who played for the Minnesota Timberwolves, hails from Aurora.

Aurora also has its own public library branch, the Hazel W. Guilford Memorial Library, operated by the BHM Regional Library system.