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 River of the divide between Eldorado and Bonanza rivers. In its general character, it is similar to the Eldorado River. Also called Bonanza Cal, later maps indicate California Creek to be a principal tributary of Bonanza River. According to Alfred Hulse Brooks, the Eskimo name is Ki-ul-uk. Bonanza River Bonanza River (alternates, Ki-ul-uk, Bonanza California, Bonanza Cal) is a waterway on the Seward Peninsula in the U.S. state of Alaska. The headwaters lie close to Venetia Creek and the Koksuktapaga River. It flows southeast for before reaching Safety Sound, as do the Flambeau and Eldorado Rivers, and then through Safety Inlet