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 Dam of the lift will be 21 minutes. It says that the expected dimensions of the passenger vessels the ship lift's basin was designed to carry will be X X . The moving mass (including counterweights) is 34,000 tonnes. The trials of elevator finished in July 2016, the first cargo ship was lifted in July 15, the lift time comprised 8 minutes. "Shanghai Daily" reported that the first operational use of the lift was on September 18, 2016, when limited ""operational testing"" of the lift began. Plans also exist for the construction of short portage railways bypassing the dam area altogether.