What it means
Gateway is the word Scottsdale uses for a first hike. Strictly it is a place, the Gateway Trailhead at 18333 N. Thompson Peak Parkway, between DC Ranch and McDowell Mountain Ranch, and the Gateway Loop is the trail behind it: about 4.4 miles and 700 feet of climbing up through cholla and saguaro to a saddle with Thompson Peak overhead and the Valley spread out behind you, then down the other side. In conversation it is shorthand for “the easy, beautiful one with real bathrooms.” A neighbor who says “we did Gateway” means a two-hour morning, not an expedition.
It is also the Preserve’s sampler. Visitors are sent here because the trailhead explains the desert, the loop shows it off, and the harder routes, Bell Pass, Windgate Pass and the long day to Thompson Peak, all start from the same lot. The trailhead’s amenities, the building’s story and the full how-to are in the Gateway Trailhead guide; the local habits are in Gateway Loop protocols. This entry is about the name and how it is used.
Where you’ll meet it
Hotel concierge recommendations, the best hikes list, the Conservancy’s guided walks, every out-of-town visit between November and April, and the Thompson Peak Parkway traffic that backs up on winter Saturday mornings.
Where the word came from
The name is descriptive, and nobody has claimed it. When Scottsdale voters started buying the McDowells with the Preserve tax of May 23, 1995 and its 2004 expansion, the city ended up owning a mountain range with nowhere civilized to park. Its first answer was the Lost Dog Wash trailhead off Via Linda. Its main entrance, planned as the place where the Preserve would introduce itself, opened in May 2009 on Thompson Peak Parkway, and the city called it what it was meant to be: the Gateway.
The building made the point. Weddle Gilmore of Scottsdale designed it with rammed-earth walls made largely from soil dug on site and a cobble-covered roof that disappears when you look back from the saddle, and it earned a LEED Platinum rating. The trail system around it took the name too. The loop was laid out as a modest circuit for people who wanted a taste of the range, with the pass trails branching off for people who wanted more.
What nobody quite predicted was how completely the loop would become the default. By the 2010s “Gateway” was the answer to “where should we hike?” for a whole quadrant of the city, which is why the biggest lot in the Preserve fills before most people have finished coffee.
What it is not
The Gateway Loop is not the Windgate and Bell Pass loop, a 9.5-mile, roughly 2,000-foot half-day that shares its first and last miles. It is not Mesa Gateway, the airport, either; when locals say “Gateway” on a trail, they mean Thompson Peak Parkway.
The fine print
The loop’s numbers are consistent across the city’s materials and the trail apps within a tenth of a mile: about 4.4 miles and 700 feet of gain, rocky in places, with one sustained climb. The Conservancy describes the Gateway trails as rocky, except the accessible Bajada, with elevation gains from about 100 to 1,900 feet depending on the route; the loop sits in the middle.
The rules are the Preserve’s rules. The trailhead is open sunrise to sunset and free. Dogs must be on a handheld leash no longer than six feet, and the city’s guidance is blunt: if it will be over 90 degrees at any point in your hike, it is too hot for your dog. Electric bikes are banned throughout the Preserve. There is no water on the trail; the fountains at the building are for topping off.
The loop also crosses one of the range’s odder bits of history. The diggings and tailings visible south of the trail belong to the Paradise Gold Mine. The Conservancy’s history notes that the Paradise Gold Mining Company was organized in 1916, ran what looked like a working mine, and left no record of producing any gold; when authorities tried to serve its owners with legal papers in 1923, they could not be found. The best thing ever taken out of this hillside, it turns out, was the view.