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,
Kyle Ranch Kyle Ranch The Kyle Ranch was established by Conrad Kiel in 1875 in what is now North Las Vegas, Nevada. The ranch's name is spelled alternately as "Kiel" and "Kyle" because Conrad Kiel spelled his name and ranch both ways. The site is currently managed by the City of North Las Vegas Parks and Recreation Division as the "Kiel Ranch Historic Park." As of July 2016, the park is open to the public. The original adobe structure, one of the oldest extent buildings in Las Vegas, a wooden shed known as the "Doll House" and the Kyle Ranch Cemetery are