The show is set in the 1860s and centers on the wealthy Cartwright family, who live in the vicinity of Virginia City, Nevada, bordering Lake Tahoe.

The series initially starred Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon and later featured (at various times) Guy Williams, David Canary, Mitch Vogel and Tim Matheson.

Through exposition[7] and flashback episodes, the viewer learns that each wife was accorded a different ancestry: English,[8] Swedish,[9] and French Creole,[10] respectively.

[7] The vast size of the Cartwrights' land was quietly revised to "half a million acres" (2,000 km2) in Lorne Greene's 1964 song, "Saga of the Ponderosa".

The nearest town to the Ponderosa was Virginia City, where the Cartwrights would go to converse with Sheriff Roy Coffee (played by veteran actor Ray Teal), or his deputy Clem Foster (Bing Russell).

Bonanza was considered an atypical Western for its time, as the core of the storylines dealt less about the range but more with Ben and his three dissimilar sons, how they cared for one another, their neighbors and just causes.

Most shows that tried to do it failed because the sponsors didn't like it, and the networks were nervous about getting letters," explains Stephen Battaglio, a senior editor for TV Guide magazine.

The first Virginia City set was used on the show until 1970 and was located on a backlot at Paramount and featured in episodes of Have Gun – Will Travel, Mannix and The Brady Bunch.

The script was initially written for the departing David Canary's Candy, but was rewritten for actors Ray Teal (Sheriff Roy Coffee) and Bing Russell (Deputy Clem Foster), who rarely appeared together on the show.

Below is a survey of costumes employed: It was not unusual for Little Joe Cartwright and Candy Canaday to appear shirtless in various scenes involving manual labor.

[30] Bonanza features a memorable theme song by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans that was orchestrated by David Rose and arranged by Billy May for the television series.

Although there were two official sets of lyrics (some country-western singers, avoiding royalties, substituted the copyright renditions with their own words), the series simply used an instrumental theme.

Three of the cast members bellowed out the original lyrics, unaccompanied, at the close of the pilot (Pernell Roberts, the sole professional singer of the quartet, abstained and untethered the horse reins).

Before the pilot aired (on September 12, 1959), the song sequence, deemed too campy, was edited out of the scene and instead the Cartwrights headed back to the ranch whooping and howling.

In the fall of 1972, NBC moved Bonanza to Tuesday nights—where reruns from the 1967–1970 period had been broadcast the previous summer under the title The Ponderosa[6]—opposite the All in the Family spinoff show, Maude, which was a virtual death sentence for the program.

David Canary returned to his former role of Candy (to offset Hoss' absence), and a new character named Griff King (played by Tim Matheson) was added in an attempt to lure younger viewers.

Episodes ranged from high drama[32] to broad comedy[33] and addressed issues such as the environment,[34] substance abuse,[35] domestic violence,[36] anti-war sentiment,[37] and illegitimate births.

[48] Bonanza is uniquely known for having addressed racism, not typically covered on American television during the time period, from a compassionate, humanitarian point-of-view.

When he expels the brilliant Jewish student Albert Michelson, a scientific genius whose experiments on the streets of Virginia City often cause commotion, Ben Cartwright steps in and confronts Norton on his bigotry.

At the beginning of the episode, Adam is shown to be outraged at the Supreme Court's Dred Scott v. Sandford decision (placing the time as 1857), which he discusses with his father.

In the episode "The Wish", directed by Michael Landon, Hoss protects an African-American former slave's family when confronted with racism after the American Civil War.

[39] "The Lonely Man" presents the controversial interracial marriage between the Cartwrights' longtime Chinese chef (Hop Sing) and a white woman (Missy).

For Season 3, NBC moved Bonanza to Sundays at 9:00 pm Eastern with new sponsor Chevrolet (replacing The Dinah Shore Chevy Show).

These episodes have been released by several companies in different configurations, with substandard picture and sound quality, edited, and by legal necessity with the copyright-protected Evans–Livingston theme song replaced with generic western music.

According to the magazine TV Guide, producer David Dortort told Blocker he was too old to play the Hoss scion, but gave him the role of an unrelated newspaper reporter.

As was the style of television Westerns, gunfights played a major role in the movies which featured notoriously inaccurate shooting as well as unlimited ammunition.

In 2001, there was an attempt to revive the Bonanza concept with a prequel, Ponderosa—not to be confused with the 1972 summer reruns under the same title[6]—with a pilot directed by Simon Wincer and filmed in Australia.

Covering the time when the Cartwrights first arrived at the Ponderosa, when Adam and Hoss were teenagers and Joe a little boy, the series lasted 20 episodes and featured less gunfire and brawling than the original.