Bonanza Trivia
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116 free Bonanza trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
62 free Bonanza trivia questions with answers. Bonanza ran for 14 seasons and 431 episodes, and for most of the 1960s it was the biggest show on American television. This quiz covers the whole run: Ben Cartwright and his three sons by three wives, the thousand-square-mile Ponderosa on Lake Tahoe, Hop Sing, Sheriff Coffee and Virginia City, the famous galloping theme, the color-TV gamble that saved the show before it aired, Pernell Roberts walking away, Dan Blocker's death and the reunion movies that followed. Easy questions ask which network aired it and what the ranch was called. The hard ones want to know which sponsor moved it to Sunday nights, how many episodes were really shot at the Ponderosa theme park, and who made the cast's saddles. It suits a family quiz night with fans who grew up on the reruns, or anyone who wants to test how well they really know the Cartwrights. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the series, its cast and its characters, and each question shows the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 116 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Bonanza, the Western about the Cartwright family, ran from 1959 to 1973 on which US network?
NBC
NBC aired Bonanza for all 14 seasons, from September 1959 to January 1973, making it the network's longest-running Western.
Q 02What is the name of the Cartwright family ranch?
The Ponderosa
The Ponderosa takes its name from the ponderosa pine, the tall yellow pine common across the mountain West and the Sierra Nevada.
Q 03Who played patriarch Ben Cartwright?
Lorne Greene
Lorne Greene. Fourteen seasons as Ben Cartwright made him a household name.
Q 04The Cartwrights' ranch in Bonanza sat on the shore of which body of water?
Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe. The setting became so famous that a replica of the Cartwright ranch house, built on the lake's Nevada shore, drew tourists for decades from 1968.
Q 05What was Hoss Cartwright's real first name?
Eric
Eric was his given name, after his mother Inger's father; she offered 'Hoss' as a mountain-country name for a big, friendly man, and the nickname is the one that stuck.
Q 06How many sons did Ben Cartwright have when Bonanza began in 1959?
Three
Three sons rode with Ben at the start, each by a different wife; he had been widowed three times before the series began.
Q 07Which Cartwright son was the architect who built the ranch house?
Adam
Adam was the college-trained architect; in 1964 the writers gave him a fiancée so he could be married off if his actor quit, but fans protested and she left with his cousin instead.
Q 08Who played the family's cook, Hop Sing?
Victor Sen Yung
Victor Sen Yung played Hop Sing; the cook won so many fans that creator David Dortort wrote him the featured part in episodes such as 'Mark of Guilt' and 'The Lonely Man'.
Q 09Where does Bonanza's title come from?
Miners' slang for a rich vein of silver ore
Miners' slang for a rich vein of silver ore gave the show its title, a nod to the 1859 Comstock Lode strike beneath the Cartwrights' nearest town.
Q 10How many episodes of Bonanza were made?
431
Bonanza made 431 episodes across 14 seasons between 1959 and 1973, second only to one other network Western in longevity.
Q 11Which Western is the only one that ran longer than Bonanza on American network TV?
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke ran 20 seasons on CBS, though it nearly stopped at twelve: the network planned to cancel it in 1967 and backed down after an outcry from viewers.
Q 12Which set of ancestries was given to the mothers of Ben Cartwright's sons?
English, Swedish and French Creole
English, Swedish and French Creole: Marie, Little Joe's Creole mother, died when her horse threw her, the last of the losses that left Ben raising his sons alone.
Q 13Why did the network keep the expensive Bonanza when executives considered cancelling it?
It sold RCA color TV sets
Q 21Ben Cartwright's actor had a 1964 spoken-word number one about which real Old West outlaw?
Johnny Ringo
Johnny Ringo was the outlaw the actor said 'Ringo' was about, though its tale of a gunman sparing the lawman who once saved his life strays far from the real man's story; it topped the Hot 100 in December 1964.
Q 22In which country was Ben Cartwright's actor born?
Canada
Canada: he was born in Ottawa in 1915, and as a CBC radio newsreader during the war his grim delivery earned him the nickname 'The Voice of Doom'.
Q 23Ben Cartwright's actor later played which role in the original Battlestar Galactica?
Commander Adama
Commander Adama led the last human survivors in a ragtag fleet hunting for Earth with his son Apollo among his pilots, so the actor was once again a father leading his sons.
It sold RCA color TV sets: RCA owned the network, so a Western filmed in color, at extra cost, was worth keeping as a showcase for what the new sets could do.
Q 14Which sponsor took over when Bonanza moved to Sunday nights for its third season?
Chevrolet
Chevrolet came aboard when Bonanza took over The Dinah Shore Chevy Show's Sunday 9 pm slot in 1961, and the move lifted the Western to No. 2 in the ratings.
Q 15Which sitcom was Bonanza scheduled against in the fall of 1972, hastening its cancellation?
Maude
Maude, the new CBS hit, was Bonanza's Tuesday-night opponent in fall 1972; the move from Sunday plus the loss of Dan Blocker sent ratings plunging, and the last episode aired in January 1973.
Q 16What was the name of Ben Cartwright's horse on Bonanza?
Buck
Buck was Ben's buckskin; Little Joe's paint horse was called Cochise after the Apache chief, while Hoss rode the big dark-brown Chub.
Q 17Which songwriting duo behind 'Que Sera, Sera' also wrote Bonanza's theme song?
Jay Livingston and Ray Evans
Jay Livingston and Ray Evans wrote it between film songs that won them three Oscars; they also wrote the Mister Ed theme, which Livingston ended up singing himself.
Q 18What happened to the Bonanza pilot's closing scene of the Cartwrights singing?
It was cut before broadcast as too campy
It was cut before broadcast as too campy; the Cartwrights ride home whooping instead, and for the rest of its run the series used the tune only as an instrumental.
Q 19Whose orchestra took an instrumental Bonanza theme to No. 19 on the Hot 100 in 1961?
Al Caiola
Al Caiola's guitar-led orchestra took an instrumental 'Bonanza' to No. 19 on the Hot 100 in 1961, the same year his 'The Magnificent Seven' theme also charted.
Q 20Which country star recorded a version of the Bonanza theme with rewritten lyrics for a 1962 single?
Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash wrote new words with his friend Johnny Western, but 'Bonanza!' only grazed the Hot 100 at No. 94, and the series never used it.
Q 24Which sport did Dan Blocker star in at Sul Ross State?
Football
Football: Dan Blocker was a star player at Sul Ross State, but a small part in a campus play there turned him toward acting, and he left in 1950 with a drama degree.
Q 25In which war did Dan Blocker serve as an infantry sergeant, earning a Purple Heart?
Korean War
Korean War: he was drafted straight after a summer of stock theatre in Boston, fought with the 45th Infantry Division and was wounded in combat.
Q 26Which restaurant chain did Dan Blocker part-own and promote in character as Hoss?
Bonanza Steakhouse
Bonanza Steakhouse began in 1963 with Dan Blocker as part-owner and pitchman; decades later one company bought both it and its closest rival.
Q 27What caused Dan Blocker's death in May 1972?
A pulmonary embolism after gallbladder surgery
A pulmonary embolism after gallbladder surgery killed Dan Blocker at 43; Robert Altman had just cast him in The Long Goodbye and dedicated the film to him.
Q 28In the 1972 Bonanza episode 'Forever', what happens to Alice soon after she marries Little Joe?
She is murdered
She is murdered by men collecting her brother's gambling debts; Little Joe's actor had written the love story for Hoss and reworked it for Joe after Dan Blocker died.
Q 29Little Joe's actor was born under what name?
Eugene Maurice Orowitz
Eugene Maurice Orowitz felt the name would never suit an actor, so once in Hollywood he went through the phone book and picked a new one.
Q 30Which 1957 horror film made Little Joe's actor a teen sensation before Bonanza?
I Was a Teenage Werewolf
I Was a Teenage Werewolf became one of American International's biggest hits, and five months later the studio had I Was a Teenage Frankenstein in cinemas to repeat the trick.