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Colorful Characters from Incline’s Past
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 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
Grand Opening was held with NBC President Thomas Sarnoff, Dan Blocker, Michael Landon and Lorne Greene all present. Governor Paul Laxalt unveiled the dedication placard o the ranch house near the front door and some 500 travel agents and media representatives wrote glowing reports which circulated around the world. With all the added attractions the price of admission had only risen to one dollar for adults. In 1968 some 250,000 people came to Incline Village to visit the Ponderosa Ranch and the “Cartwright family home” had become the number one holiday destination for Bonanza television fans around the world. In succeeding years annual attendance between Easter and October was almost always a quarter of a million people or more, and hundreds of others attended private events held on the property.
Interviewing Joyce Anderson Bock and family members brought to light other aspects of the operation that most visitors never realized. For instance, although the facility was here in Incline Village, much seasonal help did not come from locals but from college students recruited from the midwest—especially Minnesota and North Dakota. The business required about 125 people on a daily basis and many seasonal employees returned year after year. Visitors to the Ranch filled the nearby motels and hotel/casinos; others stayed in Reno, Truckee or on the South Shore and drove in for the day. International visitors planned summer vacations just to see the “home” of Hoss and Ben Cartwright with Germany and Japan the primary sources. Our local Visitor Center has said that even today foreign tourists arrive asking how they can see and perhaps tour the famous Ponderosa Ranch.
In the late 1960’s Bill seriously explored the possibility of recreating the old Incline Railway of logging operation days as a tourist attraction for the Ranch—one that could operate year round. But running the numbers revealed that it’s construction and operation would cost more than it could return and so the idea was shelved. That idea of rebuilding the funicular was revived by the new management team headed by David Geddes around the year 2000 and engineering drawings were even completed, but this time the idea was further beset by permitting and regulatory issues. The famous Cartwright Ranch House which was introduced to the public in 1967 was largely constructed from antique lumber recycled from the old Hall of Records building in San Jose and a razed mansion in Antioch, CA. And the famous village church which opened in 1976 was not moved to Incline from the Nevada boondocks but built on site replete with six stained glass windows which did from an actual church near Topeka, KS that Bill learned was about to be razed for a freeway project. Give Bill Anderson credit, when it came to recycling he was 40 years ahead of the times.
Many people also never knew that Bill and Joyce Anderson became ambassadors of good will to the world for the United States Department of Commerce, receiving the very first “Visit U.S.A. Ambassadors” citation in 1972. Bill and Joyce toured the world for the Department of Commerce between 1972 and ’76. One such trip to New Zealand resulted in buying a second home there at Lake Taupo where they then spent winters. It was there that their daughter Jillaine met David Geddes whom she later married. Bill and Joyce legally separated in 1988 and concluded an amicable divorce in 1995. In 1996 Bill Anderson gifted the Ranch to his children and retired to his “other ranch” in the Dayton Valley. Then son-in-law David Geddes became President of the Ponderosa Ranch while son Royce as Vice President handled the day-to-day operations and Jillaine handled the merchandizing business. Bill Anderson passed away in 2004 shortly after completing his autobiography. Joyce Anderson married famed test pilot Charles Bock in 1997. Charlie passed away in 2019 and Joyce still lives part of the year in the beautiful home she and Bill had built together back in the day above Tunnel Creek.
The family decision to sell the ranch was first considered early in the new Millennium after David and the Anderson children concluded that with major projects like reinventing the Incline Railway or building a hotel and Bonanza museum on the site were so constrained that the future evolution of the Ranch was going to be problematical. As David recently remarked, and I’m paraphrasing his words….we loved running the Ponderosa Ranch but the handwriting was on the wall—you either grow and change or die. The three owners then started looking at what might be the next best use of the land and its archives and initiated discussions with several public agencies including IVGID, Washoe County, Nevada State Parks and others. The talks had slowly moved ahead for several years when in July of 2004 Incline resident David Duffield stepped forward and made a full cash offer which the family accepted. The Ponderosa Ranch continued to operate the rest of that 39th season, with throngs of happy guests as usual and closed forever on September 26, 2004. Of that last day Royce Anderson was quoted in the Nevada Appeal as saying, “People just didn’t want to leave…. It was great, and we ran out of everything, including beer.”
Joyce Anderson Bock holding a portrait of her and Bill.
