Ponderosa Ranch entrepreneur David Duffield in 2004. In September 2004 he closed the Ponderosa "indefinitely". Ponderosa Ranch The Ponderosa Ranch was a theme park based on the popular 1960s television western "Bonanza", which housed the affluent land, timber and livestock-rich Cartwright family. The amusement park operated in Incline Village, Nevada, near Lake Tahoe, from 1967 until 2004. Portions of the last five seasons of the TV series and three TV movies were also filmed at that location. The Ponderosa was the fictional setting for "Bonanza". According to the 9th episode ("Mr. Henry Comstock") in the first season, it was a thousand-square mile
U Lazy S Ranch split some of the acreage into farms. In 1949, Lott started flying an airplane to drive the cattle and spray herbicide. In the 1950s, the land was faced with a draught. By 1954, Lott planted 1,400 acres of guar to improve the land. He was also the first Texas rancher to use a roto-pitter to break up the rangeland. Two years later, in 1956, Lott's range improvement program had worked. In 1965, Macy split her section of the ranch and renamed it the Running M Ranch. Meanwhile, the U Lazy S Ranch was managed by Lott's son, Jack Lott. By