if I remember right you probably need to have the quest for it too, it's not like the random gates in the wild
I'm quite certain that you can activate it without the quest, you'll just skip a chunk of the game, which may lead to loops, npc's wandering to wrong quest places, crashes, missing plot items, heavy injuries, loss of driving licence and end of the world in 2081.
But to sum it up, yes you don't actually walk through it, you activate it like you would a door or chest.
how many r there i wonder how many oblivion gates there are in chryadill ive completed 9 so far btw + im a lvl 11 heavy armored NORD
There are an infinite number of gates, until you finish the main quest they continue to spawn, even re-using closed gates if the game runs out.