Located at the northern bank of the upper reaches of Yangtze River, Wanzhou City has a history of over 1,500 years. The city is named Wanzhou because tens of thousands of merchants gathered here to conduct business in the distant past. Wan means Ten Thousand and Zhou means County.

For years, it has been the main material distribution center and manufacture base of eastern Sichuan and western Hubei Provinces. The port in Wanzhou is one of the ten largest ports along the Yangtze River and the second largest one in Chongqing. The completion of the Three Gorges Dam near Yichang, and the subsequent filling of the reservoir behind the dam, has submerged some of the territory under the administration of Wanzhou district; a new town has been built to resettle more than 250,000 district residents.