Historical evolution of Xituo Ancient Town

As early as the Neolithic Age, the ancestors of the Tujia Nationality have thrived in Xituo Town. Currently, Guanyin Temple, Shawan, Zhuanwa Creek, and Gonglongbei Shang and Zhou ruins have been discovered.

During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the salt industry in eastern Sichuan rose, and "Sichuan salt was sold to Chu". Xituo became an important commercial town in southeastern Sichuan at that time.

During the Tang and Song Dynasties, Xituo was one of the material distribution centers on the border between eastern Sichuan and western Hubei.

From ancient times to the present, Xituo has been an important deep-water port in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. It flourished in the middle of the Qing Dynasty. The entire town stretches vertically for five miles from the river to the flat terrain. This is the only town layout on the Yangtze River that is perpendicular to the contour line throughout. Therefore, Xituo has a thousand-step stone ladder, known as the ladder to the sky, and is also called a ladder-style town. The ladder is about 500 meters long and has a height difference of nearly 160 meters. In the ancient town, there are still well-protected Han bricks and a rare group of huge ancient tree fossils from the Third Ice Age.

As early as the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, "water and land trade, prosperous fireworks, and a county were here." The ancient history has left precious tourism wealth here, and it has become the Huangshui National Forest Park on the Yangtze River. Three Gorges Tourism Golden Online Travel Portal. Yunti Street is the main street of the town. In 1987, Yunti Street was listed as a county-level cultural relic protection unit in Shizhu County. After the Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project impounded water in 2009, a 500-meter-long old street in Yunti Street was flooded, with a submerged area of ??10,000 square meters and a construction area of ??4,250 square meters, accounting for 20% of the entire street length.

With the rise of the new Three Gorges Lake Tour, Xituo Ancient Town is developing a Tujia style street - New Yunti Street. Yunti Street is perpendicular to the Yangtze River and upward in the shape of a dragon. It has 113 steps and 1124 bluestone steps. Looking up from the Yangtze River, it seems like a ladder reaching into the sky; looking down from the top of the street, especially when there are clouds and fog, it feels like being among the clouds. Therefore, people praise it as "Yunti Street", also known as "Tongtian Street". Yunti Street is the only street along the Yangtze River that is perpendicular to the river. It has extremely important scientific research value in the history of Chinese and foreign architecture. Experts call it "the first street along the Yangtze River". On both sides of the street, there are layers of Tujia residential buildings on stilts left over from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Among them, famous buildings such as "Ziyun Palace", "Yu Palace", "Wantian Palace" and "Guihua Garden" add many ancient attractions to tourists. With its nostalgic aesthetic feeling, it is now rated as one of the first batch of Chinese historical and cultural towns by the Ministry of Construction and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. Located in Nanyang Village, Xituo Town, it was founded in the Han Dynasty and is now a group of ancient buildings in the Ming Dynasty. It is a county-level cultural relic protection unit. All the existing ancient buildings were built in the 14th year of Hongzhi (1502) in the Ming Dynasty.