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,
The Chinese Restaurant "Cartwright" instead of "Costanza" was a subtle allusion to the classic western show "Bonanza". "Bonanza" rhymes with "Costanza" and the show's main characters are the "Cartwright" family. "The Chinese Restaurant" was first read by its cast on December 5, 1990, and it was filmed on December 11. Filming took place at CBS Studio Center in Studio City, Los Angeles, California, where all filming for the second season took place. As only one location was used, it took roughly half of the time it usually took for an episode to be filmed. Cast members have remarked that the filming was shorter