GATEWAY — As Colorado Highway 141 descends into Gateway beneath the pink cliffs of the Palisade, a black sign in the Wayside Chapel’s yard asks, “Got purpose?”

Standing beside the chapel’s white cinder-block walls, which declare, “Jesus is the way,” Pastor Otto Neff said a new legion of believers have found their way into his sanctuary since he started preaching here five years ago, before the lush Gateway Canyons Resort welcomed its first guests.

“We went from about a dozen,” he said in May of his growing congregation. “Well, we had 38 last Sunday.”

For sure, Gateway has purpose.

Until recently, Gateway was little more than a 438-post-

office-box, off-the-tourist-track ranching community in uranium-rich southwest Mesa County, postcard-perfectly humbled by Utah’s La Sal Mountains and the red-rock walls of the Dolores River Canyon.

Today, people call Gateway a “destination resort.”

It’s a destination for classic car fanatics eager to check out Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks’ auto museum. It’s a destination for weekend vacationers who want to head to the canyon country to escape the city but avoid the crowds of Moab and it’s a destination for the fat-tire and hiking-boot sets itching to explore a sandstone wonderland rarely penetrated by the Camelbak-sipping crowd.

The attraction here is Hendricks’ Gateway Canyons Resort and its motel, restaurants and general store, all of which opened their doors over the last two years. The resort, which boasts the only gas station between Grand Junction and Naturita, is soon to be home to a golf course, convention center, luxury vacation lodge and the Palisade Academy, a getaway for intellectuals Hendricks calls “a vacation for your mind.”

All the changes in Gateway have brought more to the community than filled pews at the Wayside Chapel.

They’ve brought more students to the Gateway School, whose enrollment increased from 29 to 44 students between 2005 and 2007, said Principal Jim Hanks, one of the new generation of southwest Mesa County residents.

“I don’t know Gateway without a gas station and grocery store,” he said.

With those amenities, “folks have a place to meet more than they used to,” Neff said. “It has increased traffic to the area.”

More changes are on the way for the Gateway area. Anticipating the droves of resort guests expected to penetrate the nearby backcountry, the Bureau of Land Management is working with Hendricks to develop a management plan for 200,000 acres of public land around Gateway in order to direct resort guests to specific activities when they venture into the canyons beyond the resort.

BLM spokeswoman Mel Lloyd said the resort will “benefit from being surrounded by public lands so their guests can go play there.”

To assist in transforming wildland into a playground, BLM staffers are busy this summer mapping the countless miles of old mining roads and other trails crisscrossing the area as part of the agency’s fledgling plan. A team from Arizona State University formed focus groups in Grand Junction, Denver and Moab this spring to find out how people use BLM land around Gateway so the agency can figure out what areas should be managed for which kind of use.

Work on a new set of hiking trails, one of which could be about 10 miles long, on BLM land adjacent to the resort was scheduled to begin June 2 as part of National Trails Day.

One environmental group, the San Juan Citizens Alliance, doesn’t want the BLM to stop there. Executive Director Mark Pearson wants Congress to put the area on the map by designating the nearby Palisade Wilderness Study Area and nearby canyons a national conservation area similar to McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area near Grand Junction.

Finally, energy companies may have their drilling rigs poised on Gateway. Since 2004, four oil and gas leases totalling more than 3,400 acres in Unaweep and Dolores River canyons have been sold within a few miles of Gateway, according to BLM records.

Local residents, even those who came to Gateway because of the resort, “have mixed feelings” about all the changes in Gateway, but they like the convenience of the resort’s services, said Josie Blaser, who opened the busy 141 Diner with her husband Randy.

The couple are Gateway Canyons Resort veterans themselves; Randy helped open the resort’s Paradox Grille before deciding to open his own restaurant, Josie Blaser said.

During the Gateway Canyons Resort Classic Auto Festival on May 19, the 141 Diner, Gateway’s only restaurant unaffiliated with the resort, was positively electric with tourists, mostly bikers and admirers of the muscle cars that reflected the resort’s green grass and faux-adobe buildings in their spotless polish.

The diner, Blaser said, has been in business periodically since 1959 and is known for always being busy when it’s open.

“The local people are so happy we opened this (diner),” Blaser said. “This is where they come for community gathering.”

Inside the Gateway Post Office, one resident who declined to give her name for fear of retaliation, said the community used to be small and full of friendly people.

Not anymore, she said.

“They’re bringing in a bunch of snooty people,” she said of Gateway Canyons.

Another post office customer agreed: “They bring the rat race with them.”

Neff, also the community’s emergency medical services coordinator, said good and bad comes with any change. With new visitors expected to explore the trails and the canyons around Gateway, the government should invest in the area’s emergency services, he said.

“My biggest concern is that we just don’t have ‘backwoods’ equipment to get into the area,” he said. “It would be great to have a 10-mile trail, but I’m also concerned about our ability to help someone who gets hurt.”

Gateway has been changing constantly over the decades, said rancher Freida Casto, a Rifle native who moved to Gateway more than 78 years ago and now says the resort’s general store is greatly appreciated.

It’s almost like going to City Market, she said.

“They tell me that’s progress,” Casto said. “It’s just one of them things we have to go along with.”

Bobby Magill can be reached via e-mail at bmagill@gjds.com.