Posted by:
Mormon Observer
(
)
Date: September 21, 2013 10:24PM
The Ponderosa Ranch movie set is on the shores of Lake Tahoe a few miles from Virginia City. You could visit it and walk around in the house, see the barns etc.
I found this link, but I didn't know it had closed. Too bad, it was a pretty spot. But considering its fans had long since retired to old folks homes it had proably lost its appeal to the baby boomers.
http://www.thelifeofluxury.com/ponderosa-ranch/My FIL insisted that the family watch every episode of Bonanza.
He loved and idolized Ben Cartwright. A big man, in charge of a ranch that was bigger than the state of New Jersey, and No wife or woman in his life. He had a Chinese cook. Women never lasted in the Bonanza series; they turned out to be scarlett women, or dying of a disease, or got shot and died in their sweethearts arms.
There were no women in the Bonanza series that I can remember. I was amazed to see how hard hearted and unbending Ben was. There were some shepards who wanted to take their herd of about 300 sheep into California. They would only be on a tiny portion of his land on their way through the only pass within hundreds of miles. No way. Ben drove them away and called them trash. He could have charged a small fee and helped them move the flock a little faster over his land and be rid of them. The people of California would have been glad to have sheep, but Ben couldn't see the bigger picture. He had several square miles, hundreds of acres. It was a hard episode to watch.
It's not like he was having several flocks of sheep showing up every year with over 200,000 sheep being driven over "his pass".
Bonanza was a pure fantasy/ecstasy of escape for my TBM FIL who never had leadership roles in the church. I wonder how many other wanna be cattlemen/ranchers who were members felt the same way?