How can I setup a template for displaying all nodes of a given type? When I enabled the Blog module in D7 it allows a "/blogs/" page to show all blogs and then the standard blog view underneath that for single blog entries; how can I do this with my own content type?

I want to create a list of my image gallery content types that is tailored to my needs, and then have a view for individual galleries, while still keeping items in those galleries as separate nodes. 

I've worked out what seems to be a decent way to reference everything, I just can't figure out how to setup a group view for the galleries. I could just make a custom article that uses PHP to query the nodes and do it all through custom articles, but I thought perhaps the Drupal themes setup allows something more eloquent.
You can create your content type and add fields to it to create sorting criteria.  

Use taxonomy to define a vocabulary to plug into your content field.

Use pathauto to set up custom URL alias paths for your content.

Define a view to read your fields, filter all content to find what you want, sort and display it.  YOu can refine your searches using contextual filters, that will read the URL and extract information from it.

Sounds simple enough, but if you are unfamiliar with the modules it takes a bit of work to master them.