Timeline

Early Development (1919-1954)

In 1919, Sun Yat-sen came up with the idea of building the Three Gorges Dam. He thought of a dam built downstream of the Three Gorges that was capable of producing 22 gigawatts of power. It wasn’t until 1932 that preliminary work was begun.

Japanese military forces took over China and in 1939 began to design their own dam, called the Otani plan. They did this because they believed they were going to own China.

From June to September 1954, the Yangtze River flooded again, killing an estimated 33,000 people. After these horrific floods, more pressure to build the Gezhouba Dam and the Three Gorges Dam arose, since this dam was supposed to prevent mass destruction form the Yangtze floods.

The Start of a Journey (1992-1994)

It wasn’t until the 1980's that the plan for the dam became popular again. In 1992, the National People’s Congress finally approved dam construction, with 1,767 people voting for it and only 177 voting against.

They began construction on the 14th of December, 1994 with the intention of it being fully operational in 2009 (but instead it became fully operational in 2015).

A New Millennium (2003- 2006)

In 2003 the ship lock was opened. Boats and vessels could now cross a river that could not be crossed for the eight years prior. The dam uses five locks, each raising or lowering the vessel about 65 feet (19.8 meters). The two sets of staircases lock, one moving downstream and the other upstream; each consist of five locks and each can handle boats weighing up to 10,000 tons. The dam also became operational to an extent. The dam began to generate power in 2003 and has been working ever since. They could now start to pay all of their loans and debt, since they could make more money producing power (after all this dam is capable of producing enough power for 3% of China once complete).

The dam structure itself was complete in 2006 which was a big stepping stone by itself.

The Final Chapter(2012-2016)

Except for the ship lift, the dam project was completed and fully functional as of July 4, 2012 when the last of the main water turbines in the underground plant began production. However, The ship lift was complete in December 2015.