PG | Bonanza | Season 1 | 1959
In order to escape punishment for mistreating two Paiute women, a trader blames it on Adam Cartwright. The Paiutes seize Adam and make him a hostage as war erupts between the tribe and a local militia.
Directors:Paul Landres
Writers:Gene L. Coon
Lotta Crabtree is hired by mining tycoon Alpheus Troy to lure one of the Cartwrights into town and hold him for ransom in exchange for Ponderosa timber rights.
The Cartwrights go up against two San Francisco men who plan to get rich by killing off the antelope herds--which the Indians rely on for their food--and sellin...
The Cartwrights discover an old enemy killing steers on the Ponderosa. Their camp has a sickly woman who needs to get to the high desert country. When an innoce...
In order to escape punishment for mistreating two Paiute women, a trader blames it on Adam Cartwright. The Paiutes seize Adam and make him a hostage as war erup...
The Cartwrights help Virginia City reporter Samuel Langhorne Clemens investigate suspected shady goings-on between a railroad company and a local judge.
Little Joe falls in love with an older woman, the owner of the town's saloon/brothel, much to the chagrin of his family, moralizing town leaders, and creating a...
Feisty Annie O'Toole comes to Nevada with her old Da (aka "Himself") to mine silver and winds up feeding the silver miners, shanghaiing Adam Cartwright to be he...
Philip Diedesheimer, a Pied Piper, is refused payment after he saves Virginia City's silver mines from a cave-in.
When threatened by a man fraudulently sold a part of the Ponderosa by a Henry T.P. Comstock, the Cartwrights remember when they first met the silver-tongued cla...
When an actress named Adah Menken comes into town, Ben considers marrying her, but his sons have other ideas. Meanwhile, trouble arrives when Adah's old lover, ...
Caught in the middle of a longtime family feud over a disputed piece of land, star-crossed lovers Joe Cartwright and Amy Bishop try to convince their stubborn f...
Little Joe and Adam join a posse bent on catching the murderers of Vannie Johnson. The longer they take to catch them, the more whipped into a lynching party th...
When one of the Morgan brothers is shot and killed by Ben during a bank holdup, they vow revenge. The friends he thought he had in town decide to hide away whil...
Adam is courting Sue Ellen Terry, a woman of questionable reputation. When Sue Ellen is gunned down, the town drunk says he saw Adam do it. Adam has to find the...
Hoss and Little Joe discover that the Shoshone Indian brave who tries to rob their hunting camp is actually a soon to give birth, pregnant Shoshone woman who re...
After tangling with bandits on the way to California to buy a prized bull for the Ponderosa, Little Joe fends off a pretty senorita and her jealous fiancé, whi...
The Cartwrights come to the aid of Leta Malvet when she is ostracized by the community after her father and brother are hanged by a lynch mob for killing two me...
Ben tries to uncover the reason gold and silver exporter, Frederick Kyle, has befriended Little Joe before the shadowy businessman's hidden Civil War agenda tea...
Hoss and Little Joe are mistaken for bloodthirsty hired killers in a small Texas town dominated by two feuding families.
The Cartwrights come to the aid of a Chinese-American stable hand accused of murder. Opposing them is a manipulative mayoral candidate who wants all "foreigners...
The Cartwrights try to disprove the validity of a Spanish land grant to stop the De La Cuesta family from seizing part of the Ponderosa and all of the Carson Va...
Jeb Drummond is a murderous sheep herder that has Adam taken hostage to try and force Ben to sign over a large section of Ponderosa land to him.
As is often the case on Bonanza, things are not always as they first seem. Hoss and Adam eventually learn who is the good guy and who is not. The adventures ...
Inspector Leduque comes from New Orleans to Virginia City to take Ben Cartwright back for a 20-year-old murder. When Ben declares publicly that he is withdrawin...
Three deserters escaped from an Army stockade to the Ponderosa. When a Captain comes looking for them, Ben realizes what they've had to deal with and promises t...
Ben and Adam are locked in jail, about to hung for a crime they didn't commit. Joe and Hoss must find out why the witnesses to the alleged crime have perjured t...
An English couple comes to Ponderosa on vacation, but the wife slowly makes it clear that she is disappointed that her husband, a great hunter and "action man" ...
While in San Francisco, two of Ben's hired hands get shanghaied and so does Ben in the process of looking for them.
A neighboring rancher, Andy, is good friends with Ben, but his son (Todd) wants to sell their land for mining operations which will spoil the water rights agree...
A woman dies. Her husband is in prison, and the sheriff needs someone to look after the boy until the boy's uncle can come to claim him. The Cartwrights begin t...
While hunting a predator wolf, Little Joe finds a gypsy woman who has been rejected from her people because she is believed to be a witch.
When a powerful gang plagues Virginia City with a murderous protection racket, the Cartwrights are determined to stop it even as it threatens them.
An outlaw gang robs Virginia City's bank and makes off with almost all of its money. The youngest member of the gang manages to get a job on the Ponderosa as a ...
Charlie Trent used to be an Army scout. Now he's the town drunk. Hoss helps him regain his self-esteem when he has him volunteer to lead a gold-bearing troop th...
After a U.S. deputy marshal apparently saves Adam's life by gunning down two men who shot at him, he eventually reveals that he in town to bring a close friend ...
The Cartwrights' neighbor Tom Edwards has lived as a paraplegic, ever since an accident involving Ben Cartwright and a gun. His ranch is going to waste. His wif...
A wagon train of Quakers from Ohio are passing through town heading to Slaytersville. Adam tags along as he is smitten with the leader's daughter. Little does h...
Ranchers are being killed, cattle stolen, and even after former U.S. Deputy Marshal Denver McKee sends posses after the suspects, they are never found. Meanwhil...
When an Indian saves Ben Cartwright's life from a near fatal knife attack by another Indian, Ben later gives the Indian and his pregnant wife a strip of fertile...
Jennifer Beale is abducted in the hopes her rich father, Joshua, the richest silver baron on the Comstock, will pay a $1M ransom. The plan unravels when the bea...
Dolly Kincaid so feed up with her extremely dominant, controlling, sheriff father, that she runs away with her boyfriend. She later finds out he is the leader o...
Gunnar is a long-lost relative of the Cartwright family. When Gunnar arrives at the Ponderosa, the family takes him in for the evening. Gunnar is the brother to...
About to set out on a cattle drive, Ben hires a young drifter named Sam Jackson as one of his drovers. What he doesn't know is that Jackson is really outlaw Joh...
Adam rides up on some Indians wanting to harm a white woman they believed was a mountain spirit. He kills them but not before they wound him. The woman nurses h...
Angry with the way a beautiful deaf girl is treated by her father, a sheepherder living in a remote mountain cabin, Little Joe takes it upon himself to teach he...
Hoss mentors a lonely, mentally challenged man who, with superhuman size and strength, becomes extremely dangerous when angered. These efforts are undermined by...
When 16-year-old Todd Grayson arrives from Boston to Virginia City, he is told that his father has been killed by Ben Cartwright. Ben shot Luke Grayson in self-...
Hoss falls prey to the wiles of a beautiful woman with a gambling addiction and refuses to believe she's only interested in his money in spite of Adam's proof t...
After Joe kills a man in self defense who tried to set fire to the Ponderosa to clear himself some land, he has to take his lively, feisty, wild, daughter home ...
The Cartwright boys are shocked by the unexpected arrival of a beautiful young woman who claims to be Mrs. Ben Cartwright. But when Ben comes home to the Ponder...
Hoss and Joe "rob" a bank for altruistic reasons and are pursued not by the law but by a more serious force, Ben and Adam.
Adam goes to Mexico to investigate the death of a friend, only to face hostile townspeople and the dead man's wife.
oss accidentally kills Willie the town drunk. His remorse may not be enough to stop Willie's hate-filled brother who only wants revenge even though the townspeo...
Jock Henry is a very likeable fellow. Ask anyone. When he's given the job of collecting taxes, his peculiar methods of figuring out what people owe causes every...
Ben's sons persuade him to stay home while they hunt down cattle rustlers. However, when they fail to return, Ben must go out to find them, unaware that they've...
Ross Marquette's behavior over the past few months can't be easily explained -- beating his wife, rustling cattle, robbing a stage, killing a man. Adam is deter...
An arrogant British boxer who calls himself "The Duke of London" shows up in Virginia City with his drunken brother/manager, Limey. He challenges a meek young m...
Jed Trask has been with the Sierra Mail & Stage Lines for many years. When a group of gunmen in the town of Latigo cuts off delivery of the goods and mail, he g...
Hoss is riding back from his sweetheart Cameo's house when he comes up on a group of men that have just killed a young couple. Hoss recognizes one of the men as...
Hoss helps out a shy inventor who needs financial backing to build a horseless carriage. Things do not go well until a slick promoter sells shares into the new ...
The mines in the Comstock Lode seem tapped out. With the sharp rise in unemployment, the promise of silver found in the thunderhead could mean boom or bust to e...
Joe is accused of murdering a girl. Her father and brothers want to hang Joe, and the Cartwrights race to prove his innocence.
Hoss gets diverted by a hydrogen-filled balloon while a family friend robs the Virginia City bank.
At the bedside of a seriously ill Adam, Ben thinks back to his days as a first mate on a sailing ship and his marriage to Adam's mother, Elizabeth Stoddard.
The Cartwrights join to help mystical blacksmith Sam Hill save the land his drunk, sea-dog father signed away to an old enemy, discover the circumstances behind...
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