Park was site of 'Bonanza' television series
INCLINE VILLAGE -- Nevada's Ponderosa Ranch has faded into the sunset.
The 570-acre Western theme park overlooking Lake Tahoe and made famous by the 1960s television series "Bonanza" shut its gates Sunday after nearly four decades.
Thousands of people visited the park over the weekend for one last snapshot of the Ponderosa and the Bonanza television show that featured the Cartwright family -- Ben, Little Joe, Hoss and Adam.
Mary Beth and I visited the Ponderosa Ranch in 1998. The whole area is just incredible with its scenery. If you went up a hill behind the ranch, there was a collection of old tractors and other farm machinery. Not the prettiest collection I've seen, but still interesting. I sincerely hope that something will be done to preserve the entire site. It is a beautiful place and deserves to be left intact.
"It's the final day and look at the crowds," Royce Anderson, whose father Bill opened the Ponderosa in 1967, said Sunday.
"On Saturday we had 2,200. It was the biggest September day we've ever had. People are coming out of the woodwork."
Anderson said some of the TV program's scenes were shot in the Incline Village area and horses for the show were kept at the Incline Stables, which his father opened in 1963.
The stables later became the theme park.
Bonanza, which was first broadcast in 1959, went off the air in 1973. But the Ponderosa Ranch, with its Western town, memorabilia, "Hoss" burgers and hayride breakfasts, stayed open.
Owners of the ranch sold it in July to Incline Village resident and developer David Duffield for an undisclosed price.
A coalition of government agencies had hoped to buy the land, putting together more than $50 million for the purchase before the Ponderosa's owners made a deal with Duffield.
Government officials had said they wanted to preserve the ranch as public land.
In a written statement shortly after the sale was announced, Duffield said he had "no immediate development plans" for the property.
"It's really the end of an era," said Anderson, who was 6 years old when he first went to work for his parents at the Ponderosa.
The ranch, which was open from April to October every year, was a successful business until the end, Anderson said.
"This is the biggest year we've ever had," he said.