S1E19 - The Gunmen
S1E20 - The Fear Merchants
S1E21 - The Spanish Grant49:38
S1E22 - Blood on the Land49:22
S1E23 - Desert Justice49:27
S1E24 - The Stranger49:24
S1E25 - Escape to Ponderosa49:24
S1E26 - The Avenger49:25
S1E27 - The Last Trophy49:15
S1E28 - San Francisco49:26
S1E29 - Bitter Water49:24
S1E30 - Feet of Clay49:23
S1E31 - Dark Star49:22
S1E32 - Death at Dawn49:37
S2E1 - Showdown49:24
S2E2 - The Mission49:21
S2E3 - Badge Without Honor49:23
S2E4 - The Mill49:22
S2E5 - The Hopefuls49:24
S2E6 - Denver McKee49:41
S2E7 - Day of Reckoning49:25
S2E8 - The Abduction49:19
S2E9 - Breed of Violence49:13
S2E10 - The Last Viking49:22
S2E11 - The Trail Gang49:17
S2E12 - The Savage49:23
S2E13 - Silent Thunder49:20
S2E14 - The Ape49:24
S2E15 - The Blood Line49:37
S2E16 - The Courtship49:20
S2E17 - The Spitfire49:23
Season 1
Episode 20: The Fear Merchants
30 Jan. 1960
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” to leave Virginia City.
Episode 21: The Spanish Grant
6 Feb. 1960
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 Valley settlers’ homestead lands.
Episode 23: Desert Justice
20 Feb. 1960
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.
Episode 25: Escape to Ponderosa
5 Mar. 1960
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 real truth.
Episode 26: The Avenger
19 Mar. 1960
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 themselves before the execution takes place. They receive help from an unexpected source, a drifter called Lassiter who is searching for the men who committed a lynching in Kansas years ago.
Episode 28: San Francisco
2 Apr. 1960
While in San Francisco, two of Ben’s hired hands get shanghaied and so does Ben in the process of looking for them.
Episode 30: Feet of Clay
16 Apr. 1960
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 deal with the possibility that the boy’s father may be coming their way.
Episode 31: Dark Star
23 Apr. 1960
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.
Episode 32: Death at Dawn
30 Apr. 1960
When a powerful gang plagues Virginia City with a murderous protection racket, the Cartwrights are determined to stop it even as it threatens them.
Season 2
Episode 1: Showdown
10 Sep. 1960
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 posses that may threaten their hideout. While Ben, Adam and Hoss welcome the newcomer, Little Joe becomes suspicious of his activities.
Episode 2: The Mission
17 Sep. 1960
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 through the desert where there’s very little water.
Episode 3: Badge Without Honor
24 Sep. 1960
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’s in town to bring a close friend of the Cartwrights to Sacramento to testify in a statewide racketeering trial, but the deputy marshal’s motives soon become suspect as to what he really wants to do with the reluctant witness.
Episode 5: The Hopefuls
8 Oct. 1960
Jacob Darien is leading his family of Quakers through Virginia City. When he is accosted by town roughnecks, Adam Cartwright steps in with the help of his new traveling companion, Sam Bord. Adam offers to escort the wagon train across the Ponderosa, unaware that Sam is planning a robbery.
Episode 6: Denver McKee
15 Oct. 1960
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. Meanwhile, McKee suspiciously has plenty of money to take care of his daughter and her schooling back East.
Episode 7: Day of Reckoning
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.
Episode 8: The Abduction
29 Oct. 1960
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 beautiful Della is killed and Hercules, who loves her, finds out who did it.
Episode 9: Breed of Violence
5 Nov. 1960
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.
Episode 10: The Last Viking
12 Nov. 1960
Gunnar is a long-lost relative of the Cartwright family. When Gunnar arrives at the Ponderosa, the family takes him in for the evening. When Little Joe and his girlfriend are kidnapped by The Comancheros, the Cartwrights and Gunnar are forced into a difficult situation.
Episode 12: The Savage
3 Dec. 1960
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.
Episode 13: Silent Thunder
10 Dec. 1960
Angry with the way a beautiful deaf-mute girl is treated by her father, a sheepherder living in a remote mountain cabin, Little Joe takes it upon himself to teach her sign language so they can communicate better. His plan backfires when the young woman falls in love with him and the girl’s brutish neighbor resents her lavishing attention on the youngest Cartwright.
Episode 14: The Ape
17 Dec. 1960
Hoss mentors a lonely, mentally challenged man who, with superhuman size and strength, becomes extremely dangerous when angered. These efforts are undermined by a saloon girl who only wants this giant man-child to manipulate him.
Episode 15: The Blood Line
31 Dec. 1960
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-defense, but Todd won’t listen to this. The boy has only one thing in his head: to avenge his father by killing Ben Cartwright.
Episode 16: The Courtship
7 Jan. 1961
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 to the contrary.
