A legend is born
Mention the name "Cartwright", or "Bonanza", to any of more than 500 million television viewers arond the world and immediately a picture will be conjured up of..... the Ponderosa Ranch! "Bonanza" was the most popular western televison series in America. Little wonder its popularity should spill over into 86 foreign countries and be translated into 12 different languages. The Cartwrights - father Ben, and sons Adam, Hoss and Little Joe - typified the Great American West. They were the "good guys" who always won out over the bad guys so that right and justice prevailed. The Ponderosa Ranch, Nevada and beautiful Lake Tahoe were idelibly imprinted in the minds of Bonanza faithful when they were pin-pointed at the start of each episode by the famous

burning map.
In a short time, visitors to Nevada began making trips to Lake Tahoe just to see the famous "Ponderosa Ranch" which at the time existed only in televison scripts.
In the summer of 1959 a National Broadcasting Company (NBC) television crew arrived on location on the north shore of Lake Tahoe to start filming a new western series, "Bonanza".
"Bonanza" made its debut, with a "pilot" segment ("A Rose for Lotta") on September 12th of that year. It introduced to the vast television audience the "Cartwright" family: Father Ben, eldest son Adam, middle son - and a gentle giant of a man - Hoss, and the youngest son Little Joe.

How the Ponderosa Ranch became real
"Bonanza" had been on the air for almost four years when Bill and Joyce Anderson arrived on the scene at Incline Village, Nevada. Bill's principal occupation at the time was to supply a large development company on the north shore of Lake Tahoe with equipment necessary to carry out their operation. As a sideline, the Andersons opened a riding stable to work in conjunction with the development company's plan to give visitors to the Lake Tahoe area varied recreational outlets. Anderson also stabled the horses being used in the Bonanza filmings. A "collector of things" all his life, Anderson brought in some wagons and early west artifacts that he displayed around the stable area. "Well," he admits, "it wasn't very succesful. The tourists were coming, all right, but nog to ride. All of them wanted to see the Ponderosa Ranch that was "burned off" the screen at the start of each show. Most of the tourists were adamant in their belief that "this is the spot." All Anderson could think of then was "this has got to be the biggest piece of business chemistry I ever heard of." That's when he determined that he'd build the Ponderosa Ranch so that the thousands upon thousands of Bonanza fans who were coming to Lake Tahoe would not be "disappointed."
It took some doing, but, in his own words "a gutsy sort of a guy," he finally got the officials of NBC and the principals of "Bonanza" to join in a venture to build the Ponderosa Ranch. Shortly after, an ambitious construction program got off the ground with the result that in the summer of 1967 the gates of "The World's Most Famous Ranch" swung open to the public.
Anderson's predection that "people will come from all over the world to see it" proved more than accurate when more than a quarter-million visitors - many of them from foreign countries - poured through the gates. "It overwhelmed us," Anderson recalls, "but we did what had to be done..... we took care of them."

Virginia City and the Ponderosa Ranch
"Bonanza"'s signature opening showed a map of the Ponderosa in relation to Lake Tahoe and Virginia City, Nevada. As the theme music swelled, the map went up in flames, starting in the middle and burning outward. If you judge by that map, Virginia City is just down the trail a piece from the Cartwright ranch house. In fact, on many episodes the boys would meander into town for supplies, have lunch and a couple of beers, maybe get into a fistfight and be home well before dark. Actually, Virginia City is a 45-minute car drive from the Ponderosa Ranch.
It the fictional Cartwrights had really saddled up and ridden to Virginia City as the crow flies, it would have taken them "problably all day" to get there, says Ponderosa Ranch president David Geddes. "You'd have to ride over the ridge behind the ranch house, down into the Washoe Valley, up over the next ridge and down into another valley."

Not Virginia City, but Incline Village is near the Ponderosa Ranch of the Cartwright's


A Rip Roarin' Western Experience
How do you improve upon a success story such as the Ponderosa Ranch? Well, if you're the owners, Bill and Joyce Anderson, you continue to do what you have been doing... only better. Their philosophy, when the Ranch opened its gates back in 1967, was to see that every visitor always "got its money's worth." That is still their first priority. And one of the ways they have managed this over the years is to continue to develop the Ranch in keeping with the legend of the Cartwrights, BONANZA, and the portrayal of the Ponderosa Ranch as the early Western American way of life. Nowadays there are a variety of activities at the Ponderosa Ranch that, collectively, have made it one of the most popular attractions in the West.
One project being considered for the immediate future is the reconstruction of the "Great Incline Tramway".
It's a little publicised fact, but the original village of Incline was situated right on the land where the Ponderosa Ranch has been developed. It derived its name "Incline" from a 4000-foot long, 1400-foot vertical rise alpine funicular double track, narrow gauge railway that ran straight up the mountain from the exact area where the Ponderosa Ranch parking lot is now located. The railroad was used to transport logs from the lush Tahoe forests to the top of the mountain, there "flumed" to Washoe Valley on the other side, and thence on to the Comstock where they ended up in the maze of mines honeycombing the Virginia City hills. Reconstruction of the railroad was one of the first things to be done at the Ranch when the Andersons and NBC joined forces. The death of Dan Blocker (Hoss) in 1972 however, caused the whole project to be shelved for consideration at some time in the future. Bill Anderson says that time is "now."

And there's more to do on the Ponderosa Ranch...

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