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Joyce Anderson and Lorne Greene observing a presentation.
READERS OF THE FIRST EDITION OF LIVE.WORK.PLAY. will remember the article entitled
“Colorful Characters of Incline’s Past” (the Bill Anderson Story) concluded with Bill’s lease of 448 acres of land on the mountain where the Incline Railway had operated in the late 1800’s. In 1962 Bill had already established a small stables operation on what is now the Tunnel Creek Cafe site of his property to provide horseback riding for tourists visiting the North Shore of Lake Tahoe. In 1962 Bill decided to move that stable operation to his newly leased expanse of forested mountain side on a spot above his increasingly unused equipment yard. Access roads were created and land leveled for the construction of a much larger horse barn and coral. Long time employee J.C. Putman supervised building. Adjacent to the stable area, Bill created a frontier town to display some of the frontier era artifacts he’d been accumulating to lend the newly named Incline Stables the aura of the old west that would appeal to horseback riders. By fortunate coincidence, by 1964 the television series Bonanza had become the most watched television program in the nation. Bill had already concluded an arrangement with the show’s producers to care for the horses they used when they filmed occasional shots on location at the Lake. Increasingly visitors to the stables inquired about the location of “The Ponderosa Ranch” depicted on the burning map that opened the TV show every week. It didn’t take long for Bill to see that Incline Stables was sitting on a goldmine and he set about transforming his stables into a place which heretofore had only existed on the television screen and was filmed mostly in Hollywood TV studios. Bill decided to capitalize on the interest caused by the TV show by charging a Fifty cent admission fee to the grounds. In 1965 when Bonanza star Lorne Greene released an LP record with a song on titled “An Old Tin Cup” Bill decided to gift such a cup free to any customer who bought a soft drink at his newly created Old West Saloon near the stables. The cups and saloon were a smash hit with visitors. Over the following years tens of thousands of LIVE.WORK.PLAY.
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Colorful Characters From Incline’s Past those cups went home with tourists from around the world. Bill continued to add attractions to the Incline Stables operation, from children’s rides to an 1880’s hand carved carousel. By 1966 the operation was becoming a full scale western themed amusement park. Bill knew that there was no “real” Ponderosa Ranch except on TV, and he asked attorney Don Carano to research ownership of the name “Ponderosa Ranch” and found it was not registered. So they incorporated the “Ponderosa Ranch & Stables” name and renamed the Incline Stables operation. NBC was furious but after several months of haggling the lawyers hammered out a deal which gave Anderson exclusive rights to merchandizing Bonanza products plus rights to use the names and likenesses of the actors in exchange for 10% of the gross profits on sales at the ranch. NBC considered the deal a win-win and so did Bill. Bill then set about planning his next coup—creating an exact replica of the Cartwright family ranch house. Thanks to a disgruntled former Paramount employee, Bill obtained exact blueprints of the house as built on the studios’ lot in Los Angeles and duplicated it. It became the jewel in the crown of what had become the “real” Ponderosa Ranch in Incline Village. In June of 1967 a local grand opening was held and that year more than 150,000 people poured through the gates. But it was not long before the NBC executives realized that Incline Village now had an exact replica of the Cartwright home and another brouhaha ensued. But Bill convinced them of the benefit of having an exact duplicate of the ranch house at Lake Tahoe where they could also film scenes for TV episodes. A crew from the studio visited to make sure every aspect was the same as the studio locations. All was perfect, except that the angle of the structure to the sun was off so the shadows would be different if two scenes had to be cut together. Bill had the entire house lifted off its foundation and rotated to perfection. With the folks at NBC finally happy with the way things were playing out with their new “studio” location, a cooperative attitude had finally come into play. And on June 13, 1968 a true
