Gateway, Colorado

A Brief History of Gateway

Gateway developed as a ranching community in western Mesa County, with families arriving from nearby Utah and settling the canyon country. Ranchers used the surrounding highlands for summer livestock grazing, and further homesteading followed in the 1890s and early 1900s. The broader area also attracted mining activity: uranium, vanadium and radium were extracted on Calamity Mesa from 1916 into the late twentieth century. In 2007, the Bureau of Land Management and local partners began stabilizing buildings at Calamity Camp. Gateway remains an unincorporated community whose surrounding historic sites preserve these ranching and mining connections.