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 The project used of concrete (mainly for the dam wall), used 463,000 T of steel (enough to build 63 Eiffel Towers), and moved about of earth. The concrete dam wall is high above the rock basis. When the water level is at its maximum of above sea level, higher than the river level downstream, the dam reservoir is on average about in length and in width. It contains of water and has a total surface area of . On completion, the reservoir flooded a total area of of land, compared to the of reservoir created by the Itaipu Dam. The