Between BV and Bonanza, these properties look enormous. How does a single family get to claim so much land? Even if technically no one owned it, how do they establish all of it as theirs? Almost seems downright greedy, not to mention all the people you would need to employ if you are extracting resources.
share How to claim so much land? According to Nick Barkley in several episodes, you do it with hard work, blood and sweat. I don't think it was an "easy" thing to do by any means. It was hard work. But you could acquire large pieces of land a lot easier back then when so much of it was up for grabs and taxes weren't what they are today . It was easier to take land away from the Native Americans than the American government.
The Barkley ranch is loosely based on the Hill ranch from that era. It was about 30,000 acres. That's a drop in the bucket to the King Ranch in Texas which is now up 825,000 acres. That ranch was started in the 1850's. The Parker ranch in Hawaii is 130,000 acres. So it is possible with hard work, wise business moves, etc, to acquire a lot of land.
I wish I knew how to do it. lol
I get that it is possible, but I don't get the mechanics of it. Why not just claim the whole Northwest Territory as your own? What does hard work mean when it comes to acquiring land? Do you have to plant crops? Build buildings? Put stakes in the ground with your name on them, or erect fences? Go to the land office? Did they have longitude and latitude on terra firma back then?
shareAs I have read, many large ranches grew by exploiting loopholes in the homesteading laws which were designed to allow poor men to acquire public land for free after claiming it and working and improving it for a stated number of years.
Richer and more successful western ranchers had a number of employees like cowboys, etc. And they would have each employee file a claim to a number of acres around a waterhole or along a creek and after the required number of improvements and the required number of years for homesteading the employee would get that land free.
And after the employee got the ownership of that plot of land, the rancher would have the employee sell the land to the rancher cheap, but at a big profit for the employee. And thus the rancher would come to own the only places to water livestock in a large region of public land. Anyone could graze their cattle on the public land, but the rancher could keep their cattle from drinking water on the plots of land that the rancher owned. Thus the rancher could monopolize the grazing on large areas of public land that were many times the size of the land he legally owned.
Other ranchers who wanted to graze their herds on the public land near the water owned by the big rancher had to pay him rent to use his watering holes. And when neighboring ranchers were unsuccessful and wanted to sell out, the bigger and richer land owners would buy their herds and their land and thus increase the amount of private land they owned and the amount of public land they could control access to.
Thus a large ranch would come to control the use of regions of public land that were many times larger than the parcels of land actually owned by the ranch.
So among the western ranchers, the rich got richer and richer by repeating the homesteading process by their employees and hiring more employees to homestead more land, and buying up neighboring ranches and their herds. And so a few western ranches got very large.
I can see how they could pull this off. Problem is, the Barkleys and Cartwrights are so squeaky clean, doesn't seem like they would do this. Probably their forebears, although I get the impression Lorne Greene built his empire with his bare hands.
shareAre you suggesting that TV shows might have depicted their protagonists as being more honorable than real persons in their positions tended to be? How shocking!
In the case of the Big Valley, I have read that Mr. Barkley Sr. died 6 years before the first episode. It is possible that he spent about 20 years building up his huge ranch using methods both fair and foul, and that since his death his heirs have continued to run the property but restricted their methods to the fair category, realizing that some of the deeds of their husband and father were too unethical for them.
A number of western movies have owners of big ranches who see quite likely to have bended, twisted, and broken the laws and ethics to built up their cattle empires.
In The man from Laramie (1955) the Waggoman ranch called The Barb, somewhere in Apache territory a thousand miles from Fort Laramie, is said to be 100,000 acres in one scene, and in another is said to stretch farther than a man can ride in three days in every direction. Alec Waggoman, the owner, isn't as bad as his son but seems rather sinister and probably built up his ranch in underhanded ways.
In Duel in the Sun (1946) Senator McCanles's Spanish Bit Ranch is a million acres large, somewhere in far western Texas. Since the senator threatens to massacre hundreds of people at one point I find it easy to believe that he built up the Spanish Bit ranch using shady or down right pitch black methods.
But what about Ben Cartwright? Did he start with nothing? Or was he DJT who was handed an ill-gotten fortune and claimed to be self-made?
shareAs far as I know Nevada was pretty much uninhabited by Americans until just a few years before the 1860s when Bonanza is set.
So it would not only have been impossible for Ben Cartwright to build up the Pondorosa so fast by totally legal and non shady methods, it should have been impossible for Ben Cartwright to build up the Pondorosa Ranch so fast by even the most evil and illegal methods.
So Bonanza should be in some alternate universe where Americans began settling Nevada years or decades earlier than in our history. Maybe there was some totally fictional Spanish land grant to the Pondorosa area. And maybe Ben Cartwright somehow acquired both the ownership of the land grant and enough money to hire cowboys and other workers for the ranch, and established it right before the Comstock Lode was discovered and the silver rush began and there was a big market for the products of the ranch.
Or maybe Ben found a strange middle eastern oil lamp, rubbed it, and a genie appeared to grant three wishes.
I have read that there were several flashback episodes of Bonanza, including three that told how Ben Cartwright met the three mothers of his three sons. Since the sons were in their 20s and 30s they should have been born in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s if Bonanza time is the same as historical times. And those flashback episodes should give clues about Ben's occupations and locations at those times.
I never watched Bonanza all that close, but I did notice I think two flashback episodes where Adam and Hoss are born. Mostly I was surprised they would go down this road of making Lorne Greene look younger and change the setting from the Ponderosa. All those poor Mrs Cartwrights. I guess he never married again because he didn't want the Cartwright curse to fall on another hapless woman.
shareThree dead wives in a row is enough to make someone see a pattern or curse, whether it is there or not!
Of course some men and women have been know to remarry even after three or more spouses have died, not believing or caring if there was a curse on their spouses.
I've been a Bonanza fan for years and I belong to a BZ web site. You could say we're Bonanza-holics!
In the first BZ flashback, "Elizabeth,My Love", a young Ben (Lorne Greene with shoe polish in his hair) is a sailor coming home to Boston. His Captain, Abel Stoddard, is the father of Ben's fiance. Ben has a big dream of going west.
Elizabeth dies in childbirth and Ben heads west with an infant in tow. He takes along a woman to care for the baby. But oddly enough, it's an older woman who is way past childbearing. You'd think he'd need a wet nurse for a tiny baby!
The next flashback, Adam is six and he and his Pa are in Illinois. They haven't gone far in six years! Ben is still mourning his wife but the episode title is "Inger, My Love". A young Swedish beauty, Inger Borgstrom, catches his eye and they marry. In the next flashback, "Journey Remembered", the couple are on a wagon train west. Hoss is born on the trail. Angry Indians are after the wagon train leader for crimes he committed against them. Fighting ensues and Inger takes an arrow in the back.
In the next flashback (Marie, My Love) which takes place about five years later, Ben is in New Orleans. He leaves his boys back home. By this time he has acquired a lot of land and he is prospering. He is there to inform a woman that her husband was killed in his employ on the Ponderosa . It's a very unlikely and long trip to take at that time just to deliver some news! But Ben meets the lovely widow Marie and falls in love. She becomes Little Joe's mother. Her death was supposed to have occurred when Joe was a little boy. Her horse stumbles and she is thrown.
There were plans to make another Marie episode. But for some reason the actress, Felicia Farr (Mrs. Jack Lemmon), did not want to reprise her role.
In the first season of the show, Little Joe is about twenty. There is an episode where the Cartwrights remember the discovery of the Comstock Lode and the subsequent founding of Virginia City.
Ben had acquired the Ponderosa long before Joe was born and by the time Joe's twenty, it was supposedly a thousand square miles. In the first episodes, Ben is very hostile to anyone crossing "Ponderosa land". Lorne Greene objected to the silliness of that premise. He said that such a large land holding would have roads for people to pass through. They wouldn't be expected to go hundreds of miles AROUND the Ponderosa!
As I remember, there are several Bonanza episodes with historic events.
There is at least one episode with the Pony Express, which operated from April 3, 1860 to October 1861 in real history before the overland telegraph put it out of business.
And there may be an episode about the First Battle of Pyramid Lake 12 May 1860 and/or the Second Battle of Pyramid Lake on July 2-4, 1860.
If Little Joe was about 20 in 1860 he would have been born about 1840, and Hoss would have been born 1834-1835, and Adam would have been born about 1827-1829. (When Adam was born, going as far as Indiana might have been what Ben meant by going west) Ben would have acquired the Pondorosa during about 1834-1840, when Nevada was Mexican but probably had very few Mexicans or Americans living in it.
It seems to me that after the Comstock Lode was discovered Ben would have had trouble holding on to the Pondorosa. Just as the California gold rushers didn't respect the land rights of Mexicans or Indians or general Sutter the prospectors in Nevada wouldn't have respected Ben's rights any more than they respected the Piutes'.
So possibly there had been some sort of conflict between Ben and the prospectors just before the first episode which made Ben hostile to people entering the Pondorosa but it was settled by later episodes.
PS there was a parody of Bonanza in Mad Magazine long ago where the size of the Pondorosa was emphasized in a song Ben sang:
From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli,
the land is called the Pondorosa, and it all belongs to me.
Yes, Bonanza took advantage of many historical events. But it also took advantage of the viewing public not knowing exactly WHEN the events took place. haha
I remember the Pony Express episode, "Ride the Wind". However in the fifth season of the show the year was clearly established as 1861. There was an "Adam arc" where he was courting a young widow. In the first episode she is standing at her late husband's headstone. The date he died was February of 1861 and it is already spring because Adam invites her to the spring roundup dance at the Ponderosa. In a future episode the dialogue indicates that they've been courting for a year, so now it would be 1862.
The Pony Express episode takes place in the seventh season, long after Adam left the show and long after the demise of the actual Pony Express!
There's also an episode around 1861 when Joe meets an adult Calamity Jane. The real Calamity was born in 1852.
Interesting possibility that Ben may have had conflicts with prospectors. There was an episode when a group of settlers were "sold" deeds to Ponderosa land. They thought they owned the land fair and square, sort of like the Big Valley episode "The Brawlers". In the BZ episode the land deeds were sold by Ben's old "friend". The man had a long standing resentment of Ben. Seems that they had been in the Army together and Ben was a better soldier. Ben's friend was an officer and his nickname was "Old Fuss and Feathers". He seemed to harbor an adolescent grudge that Ben was "more popular".
Aside from becoming a wealthy landowner, Ben had a backstory of many careers including sailor AND a soldier. Where'd he find time to build the Ponderosa?
In some ways, Heath's backstory reminds me of Ben's. In many episodes he encounters someone from his past whom he had worked with before. He worked in the mines, he was a deputy, he worked with cattle, he worked in Mexico, he was in the Army,etc. In the first episode when he arrives at the
Barkley ranch ostensibly looking for work, he recites a long resume of jobs which he has held on ranches. He says something ike, "I've done it all".
And he managed to do all those jobs before the tender age of 25 when he met his Barkley family (along with several big and complicated romances which are alluded to in stories like "Days of Grace",etc). A busy boy!
Getting back to Ben "going west", I think it was clear in the episodes that Ben always wanted to go waaaay out west, not just Illinois. Ben seems to be dragging around somewhat aimlessly because he was still grieving over the loss of his first wife in "Inger, My Love". Also in later episodes it's revealed that Ben had family in Ohio. He may have stopped for a long visit with his young son.
I def saw the Marie episode recently, and the first sounds familiar, too. I don't know why, but I'm a little fascinated by this effort at back story. Not being a close watcher of Bonanza, I always just took for granted things were the way they were, they were all paragons of virtue, strange people wander into their lives.
I feel a little bad because we seem to be discussing Bonanza a lot on the The Big Valley site. I sort of like BV a little more than BZ, but I like seeing Adam episodes as I missed them the first time around, and conversely, I refuse to watch anything with Lee Majors in it. He's a stiff. But I like Pete Breck a lot and Linda Evans is a treat. The fact that Barbara Stanwyck is leading the parade makes it that more special. However, I like her film career more than this particular role. She seems to only strike one or two notes here. Not much chance to be funny, although she gets to be heroic often.
Edit: To be clear, I do watch BV, I just don't want to watch the ones where Heath has the main story line. Like I said, he's a stiff.
I also like shows that do backstory episodes. The Dick van Dyke show did a lot of them. It was Carl Reiner's intention to flesh out the whole history of Rob and Laura's courtship and early marriage.
I wish BV had done some flashbacks of Victoria and Tom starting out. I could picture Linda Evans playing the young Victoria and Lee Majors as a young Tom. Despite the newspaper picture of Tom Barkley and his portrait in the first episode, I always imagined that a young Tom Barkley looked like Heath.
I mean, why else did Victoria take to him so quickly? She was a generous and loving woman. But she seemed to have an almost unnaturally quick and deep affection for Heath. Of all her sons, I notice that he's the one she kisses on the lips the most! And since she's not actually his mother, it's not incestuous. (just a little odd)
Interesting that you like the "Adam episodes" , but you avoid the Heath ones on BV. To me, they seem to be similar characters. Both are the strong, silent type. They don't have a lot to say. But when they do speak, they mean it!
I also see similar backgrounds. Adam had a rough childhood. He and Ben started out poor, travelling west and joining a wagon train. He lost his mother before he knew her. His second mother Inger died right before his eyes. And he lost Marie when he was a teen-ager.
Heath also was raised in poor circumstances. His mother being unwed probably had a less than stellar reputation and he carried the stigma of being a b******. His father was absent and his closest relatives, his aunt and uncle in "Boots with My Father's Name" are greedy and self involved. No wonder he was so "stiff" around people. He seemed the angry young man at first, slow to trust people.
If you don't like Lee Majors' acting, well so be it. I just think his character was written as introverted and not given to emotional displays. Nick did most of the emoting in that family!
I've been watching some eps where the duo are paired up such as "Shadow of a Giant" and "The Good Thieves". Peter Breck gets all the emotional dialogue and gets to chew the scenery. Lee Majors gets to stand by silently or offer Nick calm advice like, "Simmer down."
I think it's often harder to play a character like that. Some characters get to "do". Others just have to "be". Reminds me of Mr. Spock in Star Trek. He had to convey a whole range of thoughts and feelings without showing emotion.
As for Bonanza, we can always take the BZ discussion to that board!
I started a thread about Adam in the Bonanza site, in case you or anyone else is interested. Trying to parse out our differences on Lee Majors probably would not get us anywhere, but if you go that way, I can attempt to express myself. In short, he just seems like a stiff when it comes to acting.
share No problem. Not every actor appeals to everyone.
Your use of the word stiff reminded me of someone else. I don't know if you ever saw Psycho. John Gavin played Sam Loomis, the lover of the ill-fated Marion Crane. Hitchcock wanted a bigger name actor for the role. But apparently it was too small a role for a BIG name.
Hitchcock used to refer to the actor as "the stiff". The guy was handsome but I also found his performance rather stiff. Since then I have heard others who enjoyed his portrayal of Sam.