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,
Firehole Ranch Places under the name Watkins Creek Ranch on December 27, 2006. Firehole Ranch Firehole Ranch is a private 640-acre guest ranch located on Hebgen Lake in Gallatin County, Montana. Owned and operated by Lynda Caine since 1999, Firehole Ranch was founded in the late 1890s as Watkins Creek Ranch by George S. Watkins. Originally much larger, Watkins Creek Ranch sold much of its land to the Madison Power and Light Company in 1904 to make way for the Hebgen Lake Dam. Much of Watkins’ cattle were sold to Yellowstone National Park while the remaining land was converted into a dude