Ponderosa Steakhouse and Bonanza Steakhouse under the Metromedia Restaurant Group. The names of the restaurants were derived from the classic TV series "Bonanza", which was set at a place called Ponderosa Ranch. In 1963, Dan Blocker, who played Eric "Hoss" Cartwright on "Bonanza", started the Bonanza Steakhouse chain. The first Bonanza opened in Westport, Connecticut. Sam Wyly and his brother Charles Wyly bought the small Bonanza restaurant chain three years later. The company grew to approximately 600 restaurants by 1989, when the Wylys sold it to Metromedia. In 1965, Dan Lasater, Norm Wiese and Charles Kleptz founded Ponderosa in Kokomo, Indiana, moving the headquarters to
Movie ranch evenly split between movies and television episodes, were filmed at the ranch during its peak years. The long-running TV western "The Virginian" filmed on location at Iverson in the ranch's later period, as did "Bonanza" and "Gunsmoke." By the 1960s, the ownership of the ranch was split between two of Karl and Augusta's sons, with Joe Iverson, an African safari hunter married to Iva Iverson, owning the southern half of the ranch (the Lower Iverson) and Aaron Iverson, a farmer married to Bessie Iverson, owning the northern half (the Upper Iverson). In the mid-1960s the state of California began construction