Ponderosa Ranch from the original "Bonanza" series, Lorne Greene's 1964 song "Saga of the Ponderosa", the 1988-95 TV movies, and the 2001 PAX prequel series "Ponderosa"). The ranch house was a single level structure that had a facade second storey. Inside a staircase seemingly led to the first-floor corridor, but it was a dead end. The bedroom scenes were filmed at Burbank Studios. The inspiration for the name may have been the large number of Ponderosa pines in the area or the original Latin meaning of "large" (root of the English word "ponderous"). The exteriors for the television show were occasionally shot
Bonanza Kings Bonanza Kings The Bonanza Kings, also called the Silver Kings, was a nickname given to the four men who started a stock brokerage called "Flood and O'Brien", more commonly known as the Bonanza Firm. Bonanza is a Spanish term, meaning a rich ore body; in 1873, after gaining control of the Consolidated Virginia Mining Company, they discovered a large vertical ore body more than 1,200 feet deep which became known as the "big bonanza". In 1871, Irish-Americans John William Mackay, James Graham Fair, James Clair Flood and William S. O'Brien, organized the Consolidated Virginia Silver Mine near Virginia City, Nevada,