Ben Cartwright was the head of the family, living with his three sons, Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe. All four men worked at the ranch, keeping it safe from adversaries and dealing with the challenges of frontier life. Airing between 1959 and 1973, Bonanza had a total of 431 episodes.

Because of Bonanza’s egalitarian approach to its ensemble cast, the showrunners took special measures to ensure that each actor was given equal chance to appear first in the opening sequence. The initial part of each episode rotated the credits each week, and all actors got equal opportunities to be seen as the headliners of the show.

Dan Blocker, who was 6″4 and weighed 320 pounds when the show began filming, played the role of Ben’s second son, Hoss Cartwright. Hoss was portrayed as a sweet and gullible guy.

In reality, though, Dan Blocker was the complete opposite of the clueless Hoss. He had Master’s degree and he worked for the US Army during the course of his career.

A big part of Hoss’ character had to do with his large physical dimensions. Dan Blocker himself was an exceptionally large man—and always was. He weighed 14 pounds when he was born and was the largest baby ever born in his town in Texas.

Although the character was known by fans of the show as “Hoss,” Ben Cartwright’s middle son was actually named Eric Hass Cartwright. “Hoss” was what his family in the show called him, alluding to his size.

“Hoss” is a Swedish word meaning “big and friendly”. This nickname also made sense because Hoss’s mother was of Swedish descent.

A big part of Bonanza’s concept was that each one of Ben Cartwright’s sons was from a different wife, each of whom was of a different ethnicity. Adam’s mother was British, Hoss’s was Swedish, and Little Joe’s mother was of French Creole descent.

To keep the plot nice and clean, the story was written so that Ben had lost all three of his former wives. Even during the show, any woman that he fell in love with either left him or died. This became known as the “Cartwright Curse” and Ben ended up raising his three sons as a single father.

During the filming of the show, especially sturdy horses had to be used for shooting Blocker’s riding scenes, since ordinary horses had trouble carrying him, with one even collapsing under him after he mounted it.

The producers of *Bonanza* wanted all four leading male actors in the show to have equal screen time. It was important to them that no single actor would overshadow the other three, thereby truly making them an ensemble.

Every script was closely developed, making sure all four were equally represented, and it paid off; the characters didn’t just balance each other out, they also allowed fans to have different favorites, and to root for them equally. It also ensured that if one of the characters didn’t work for a certain viewer demographic, there would be at least one other character for them to empathize with.

Blocker loved Bonanza enough to tie himself to the franchise even outside of his acting responsibilities.

In 1963, he established the first Bonanza restaurant in Westport, Connecticut. Two years later, the Ponderosa Steakhouse in Indiana, was opened, and thanks to its huge success expanded into a franchise that would span both the United States and Canada.

M-A-S-H was another hugely popular television show back in the 1970s. Unlike Bonanza, however, it was actually based on a film, which came out in 1970. During the movie’s casting, Director Robert Altman wanted Blocker to play the lead role of Capt. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce Jr.

However, due to his involvement with Bonanza,, Altman’s request was denied and Hoss wasn’t able to take part in the film or in the show that came after it. The role of Captain Pierce eventually went to Donald Sutherland.

Tragically, Blocker passed away in 1972 at the young age of 43, just 19 days before the production of the 1972-73 season was scheduled to start. Fans were devastated.

The show’s writers made television history by doing something that had never been done before.

Due to unsuccessful gallbladder surgery, Dan Blocker passed away when he was just 43. As the producers were incapable of replacing such a colorful and well-loved character, they had to make some plot-related changes. The character Hoss died due to drowning when he went to save someone’s life.

In real life, Blocker’s cast members decided to take responsibility for his final rites on themselves, and Pernell Roberts (who played his brother, Adam Cartwright in the first seasons) financed Blocker’s funeral out of his own pocket.

The success of Bonanza was remembered and revived even decades after the show completed its original 431 episode run. The show had three sequels: Bonanza: The Next Generation, Bonanza: The Return and Bonanza: Under Attack.

In 2001, there was an attempt to revive the Bonanza franchise with a show titled Ponderosa, which covered the time when the Cartwrights first arrived at their ranch. The show showed Adam and Hoss as teens, and Joe as a young boy, and ran for 20 episodes.

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