Series

Organized crime finds its way to the once-peaceful Virginia City when a ruthless protection racket arrives, threatening local businesses and demanding payments in exchange for safety. The Cartwrights are determined to confront this growing menace head-on.

S01E32 Death at Dawn

Little Joe encounters a frightened gypsy girl who believes she is bewitched after losing consciousness. Smitten, he must rescue her from her people, her dark star birth belief, and a sinister figure posing as a wolf.

S01E31 Bonanza

After a woman's death, the sheriff enlists the Cartwrights to care for her son until his uncle arrives. The boy, unaware of his father's imprisonment, learns the truth as news of the convict's escape reaches the Ponderosa.

S01E30 Feet of Clay

Andy, a neighboring rancher and close friend of Ben, faces a dilemma as his son Todd is eager to sell their family land for mining operations. This decision threatens to disrupt the crucial water rights agreement established years earlier between Andy and Ben.

S01E29 Bitter Water

The Cartwrights, with Hop Sing, finish a cattle drive in San Francisco. Ben warns the other men of the dangers of the big city. Nevertheless, some of the men are careless and naive. Two of the hired hands disappear, and Ben suspects that the men were shanghaied.

S01E28 Francisco

Adam takes Ben's friends, Lord Marion Dunsworth and Lady Beatrice, on a hunting expedition, and they are captured by a gang of crude thieves and murderers. During one early scene, after listening to Ben reminisce, Hoss says, I always like to hear Pa get wound up. He doesn't do it often.

S01E27 The LaTrophy

Ben and Adam are locked up in jail, about to be hanged for a crime they didn't commit. Joe and Hoss must find out why the witnesses to the alleged crime have perjured themselves before the execution takes place.

S01E26 The Avenger

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 to let his good friend in charge of that fort know the truth.

S01E25 Eto Ponderosa

Inspector Leduque comes from New Orleans to Virginia City to take Ben Cartwright back for a 20-year murder. When Ben declares publicly that he is withdrawing from the governor's race, the townsfolk are upset not just about this, but Little Joe has also been accused of gunning down Leduque's deputy!

S01E24 The Stranger

As is frequently the case on Bonanza, appearances can be deceiving. Throughout their adventure, Hoss and Adam gradually uncover the truth, ultimately discerning who among them is the genuine hero and who is hiding a more sinister agenda.

S01E23 DeJustice

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.

S01E22 Blood on the Land

The Cartwrights work diligently to disprove the legitimacy of a controversial Spanish land grant, hoping to prevent the De La Cuesta family from illegally seizing a portion of the Ponderosa and the homesteads of all Carson Valley settlers.

S01E21 The Grant

The Cartwrights step in to support a Chinese-American stable hand wrongfully accused of murder. Standing against them is a cunning mayoral candidate who seeks to rid Virginia City of all foreigners, exploiting the situation for political gain.

S01E20 The Fear Merchants

In a small Texas town, Hoss and Little Joe are wrongly identified as ruthless hired killers amidst a bitter feud between two powerful families. Their unexpected arrival sparks chaos as tensions escalate and misunderstandings unfold.

S01E19 The Gunmen

Season 1

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 him back to health but the rest of the tribe is still out there looking for her. 

S02E12 The Savage

About to set out on a cattle drive, Ben hires a young drifter named Sam Jackson as one of his drivers. What he doesn't know is that Jackson is really outlaw Johnny Logan, who signed on to the drive because he knew it was going to pass near the town of Waycross.

S02E11 The Trail Gang

Gunnar, a long-lost relative of the Cartwright family and brother of one of Ben's late wives, arrives at the Ponderosa. Unbeknownst to them, he leads a band of criminals, The Comancheros. When Little Joe and his girlfriend are kidnapped, the Cartwrights face a difficult situation with Gunnar.

S02E10 The LaViking

Dolly Kincaid is so fed up with her extremely dominant, controlling sheriff father that she runs away with her boyfriend. She later finds out he is the leader of some murderous bank robbers, and when they kidnap Hoss and Joe, she still sticks with him.

S02E09 Breed of Violence

Jennifer Beale is abducted in the hopes her rich father, Joshua, the richest silver baron on the Comstock, will pay a one million ransom. The plan unravels when the beautiful Della is killed and Hercules, who loves her, finds out who did it. 

S02E08 The Abduction

Prejudice erupts on both sides when Ben gives an Indian named Matsou and his wife some of his land after saving Ben's life from a renegade Indian who almost killed him on the Ponderosa. An intense and magnetic performance by Ricardo Montalban.

S02E07 Day of Reckoning

As former lawman McKee celebrates his daughter Connie's return, he is asked to help capture an outlaw gang. Meanwhile, while Joe is trying to win Connie's affection, no one suspects that McKee is secretly involved with the criminals.

S02E06 Denver McKee

Adam takes charge of guiding a wagon train of Quakers through treacherous lands, and along the way, he finds himself increasingly drawn to Regina, the kind daughter of their leader. However, as danger looms, Adam’s need to use force to defend the group directly opposes the Quakers’ commitment to peace.

S02E05 The Hopefuls

The Cartwrights' neighbor Tom Edwards has lived as a paraplegic ever since an accident involving Ben Cartwright and a gun. His wife Joyce is a longtime friend of Ben, and Ben decides to help the Edwards couple by making Tom a business proposition, the Cartwrights will build a grain mill on Edwards' land.

S02E04 The Mill

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 was in town to bring a close friend of the Cartwrights to San Francisco to testify in a statewide racketeering trial, but the deputy marshal's motives soon become suspect.

S02E03 Badge Without Honor

Charlie Trent, once an Army scout, has fallen into the role of the town drunk. However, Hoss steps in to help him rebuild his self-esteem by encouraging him to volunteer as a guide for a gold-seeking troop crossing the arid desert, where water is scarce.

S02E02 The Mission

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 bronc buster with the intention of informing the bank robbers of any possessions that may threaten their hideout.