Gateway, Colorado has a rich history steeped in the ancient peoples of the Fremont, Anasazi, and Ute tribes, who once made these canyons and plateaus their home. Gateway has played host to gangs of cattle rustlers who used these canyon walls as hideouts from the law, miners who tunneled deep into the earth with the hope of finding their fortunes, and ranchers who have grazed thousands of cattle across Unaweep’s windswept grasslands. The canyon witnessed a copper boom around the turn of the century; decades later, the U.S. Army processed ore from nearby Uravan to produce the uranium used in the first atomic bombs.

Unaweep Canyon cuts through the soft red sandstone of the Uncompahgre Plateau, exposing stone dated to Precambrian times. Ancient rivers silted the rock away, exposing more than a hundred million years of the geologic record and fossils of dinosaurs and early amphibians. Human artifacts from ancient civilizations, as well as modern man, abound in Gateway, from the rock art and pertroglyphs of the Anasazi and Freemont tribes to the modern ruins of the Driggs mansion, Hanging Flume and Coke Ovens.