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,
Bonanza convalescence because the first time that Blocker swung up into the saddle on his return, the horse collapsed under his weight and the cast and crew collapsed in fits of laughter. The role of "Little Joe" was given to Michael Landon, who had earlier played the title role in "I Was a Teenage Werewolf". He portrayed the youngest Cartwright son, whose mother (Felicia in the pilot, and later changed to Marie) was of French Creole descent. Landon began to develop his skills in writing and directing "Bonanza" episodes, starting with "The Gamble." Most of the episodes Landon wrote and directed