Ponderosa Ranch high in the Sierra Nevada, with a large ranch house in the center of it. Ben Cartwright was said to have built the original, smaller homestead after moving from New Orleans with his pregnant third wife Marie and his two sons, Adam and Hoss. The grown Adam, an architect/engineer, designed the later sprawling ranch house as depicted on TV ("Bonanza, The Philip Diedesheimer Story", Oct. 31, 1959, NBC-TV; "Bonanza: The Return", April 1993, NBC-TV). The fictional ranch was roughly a two-hour horse ride from Virginia City, Nevada. (Note: There are slight variations as to the origin of the Ponderosa Ranch,
Bonanza Creek Bonanza Creek Bonanza Creek is a watercourse in Yukon Territory, Canada. It runs for about from King Solomon's Dome to the Klondike River. In the last years of the 19th century and the early 20th century, Bonanza Creek was the centre of the Klondike Gold Rush, which attracted tens of thousands of prospectors to the creek and the area surrounding it. Prior to 1896 the creek was known as Rabbit Creek. Its name was changed by miners in honour of the millions of dollars in gold found in and around the creek. During gold-mining operations, the course of the creek