Three Gorges assisted Yu the Great in controling the waters and guiding boatmen. The Xiling Gorge comprises a series of famous gorges, including Military Book and Sword Gorge, Yellow Cow Gorge, and Lantern's Shadow Gorge. In 1919, after Sun Yat-sen had put forward the concept in the Plan for Industrial Development of his (), experts investigated damming the Three Gorges, but it was not until 1994 that the Three Gorges project officially started. In 1944, the Nationalist government recruited John L. Savage, the Chief Engineer of the United States Bureau of Reclamation, who came to China and made a 10-day investigation of
Three Gorges Reservoir Region the Three Gorges Reservoir Region, such as gold, silver, copper, iron, uranium, sulfur, potassium, natural gas and halite. The natural sights along the Yangtze River in the Three Gorges Reservoir Region are superb, particularly the along 162-km main river between Sandouping of Yichang and Baidicheng Town of Fengjie, which are the famous sights of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River and one of the tourist places of interest all over the world. In addition, there are a lot of cultural and historical sites, such as the Qu Yuan Temple of Zigui, the Zhaojun Home Village of Xingshan, the Shibao