Bonanza: Season 10
Season 10 Lore Primer
Key plot threads, lore context, and character stakes you need to remember before diving into this season.
- Picks up essential narrative continuity directly following the events of Bonanza Season 9.
- Character alliances, factions, and personal loyalties undergo significant shifts under escalating stakes.
- Addresses unresolved cliffhangers and thematic mysteries introduced during previous seasons.
- Establishes the primary seasonal conflict that drives serialized character arcs toward the finale.
Episode Guide
Season 10 Progress Shield
Different Pines, Same Wind
Sep 15, 1968 · 49 min
The 10th season opens as Joe helps a widowed mountain woman, a recluse who is suffering from an infection that has become serious, in a battle to save her land from an unscrupulous
Child
Sep 22, 1968 · 49 min
While Hoss is in a remote town on business, he is arrested for murder and robbery. The town's richest man has just been killed, and the townspeople are less concerned with justice
Salute to Yesterday
Sep 29, 1968 · 49 min
When on a cattle drive on Ponderosa land, the Cartwrights and Candy find a dying cavalry officer on the trail. With his last breath, he asks them to go help his commanding officer
The Real People of Muddy Creek
Oct 6, 1968 · 49 min
Ben is in charge of a vicious prisoner and gets virtually no help from the cowardly citizens of the town where he is holding him from the law.
The Passing of a King
Oct 13, 1968 · 49 min
The son of a rancher to whom the Cartwrights are selling a prize bull is trying to get his father ruled mentally incompetant, and will let no one stand in his way.
The Last Vote
Oct 20, 1968 · 49 min
Hoss and Joe's bickering leads them into taking opposite sides in the Virginia City mayoral race. Their zealous actions leads into dividing Virginia City's citizens into 2 faction
Catch as Catch Can
Oct 27, 1968 · 49 min
The residents of Tin Bucket claim the Cartwrights and Candy are dealing in stolen cattle hides. With most of the town accusing Joe, Hoss and Candy of various crimes, it is Ben who
Little Girl Lost
Nov 3, 1968 · 49 min
A bratty 10-year-old girl named Samantha, whose mother is Ben's cousin and is a third cousin of Hoss and Little Joe, comes to the Ponderosa. While she proves to be a handful, Ben (
The Survivors
Nov 10, 1968 · 49 min
A white woman abducted years before by the Paiutes is reunited with her husband, who is less than pleased to learn she has given birth to an Indian baby.
The Sound of Drums
Nov 17, 1968 · 49 min
In the third and final installment of the Rossi family, Georgio Rossi doesn't understand why he cannot allow Indians who have left the reservation to live on his land.
Queen High
Dec 1, 1968 · 49 min
Joe and Candy win a stamping mill in a poker game, but the fact of them not knowing how to run it, is the least of their worries.
Yonder Man
Dec 8, 1968 · 49 min
An army scout Ben once knew comes to the Ponderosa and asks Ben to stake a cattle ranch in Mira Flores, Mexico.
Mark of Guilt
Dec 15, 1968 · 49 min
Hop Sing tells Hoss and Candy they can use the ancient Chinese art of fingerprinting to prove Joe is innocent of murder.
A World Full of Cannibals
Dec 22, 1968 · 49 min
Ben agrees to hide a government witness in a land fraud case at the Ponderosa as part of the witness protection program. However, the witness - who along with eight men committed v
Sweet Annie Laurie
Jan 5, 1969 · 49 min
Hoss offers to help Annie Laurie, a beautiful young woman who is running away from her abusive husband, a career criminal who is determined to keep his wife under his control and t
My Friend, My Enemy
Jan 12, 1969 · 49 min
Only the testimony of an Indian wanted for horse theft can clear Candy of murder.
Mrs. Wharton and the Lesser Breeds
Jan 19, 1969 · 49 min
Candy sets out to help a feisty and elderly British woman recover the jewels stolen from her in a stage holdup.
Erin
Jan 26, 1969 · 49 min
A neighbor of the Cartwrights threatens Hoss' fiancé, Erin - a beautiful young woman who has been raised by Indians since her childhood - when Ben allows the Paiutes to camp on Pon
Company of Forgotten Men
Feb 2, 1969 · 49 min
A retired Army sergeant, bitter that he never received his pension from the government, kidnaps one-time friend Candy and forces him to go along with a daring plan to blow up the U
The Clarion
Feb 9, 1969 · 49 min
Ben's friend is struggling to keep her newspaper going in the face of harrassment by the town boss of Gunlock, so without telling her, Ben buys the business.
The Lady and the Mountain Lion
Feb 23, 1969 · 49 min
A shady magician, with his twin daughters, comes to Virginia City and there is a lot of confusion with the daughters of the magician, twin confusion!
Five Candles
Mar 2, 1969 · 49 min
The floor of the Virginia City courthouse collapses, trapping Ben in the basement with three other people, one of whom may or may not be guilty of murder.
The Wish
Mar 9, 1969 · 49 min
Hoss spends his two-month vacation helping a black family get their farm in shape, and dealing with racism in the neighboring town.
The Deserter
Mar 16, 1969 · 49 min
Candy comes upon a soldier who is running from charges of desertion, and with Joe's help they foil a plan to sell rapid-fire rifles to the Indians.
Emily
Mar 23, 1969 · 49 min
Joe is shocked to see his ex-fiancee, Emily Anderson, in Virginia City. He had met her in Monterey five years earlier, and they had planned to get married. But her strict father
The Running Man
Mar 30, 1969 · 49 min
Joe and Candy travel to Butlerville and learn that one of Ben's closest friends is burning out new settlers, whom he regards as squatters. Candy's old ex-flame is married to Jess
The Unwanted
Apr 6, 1969 · 49 min
Feeling unloved, a Marshal's daughter runs off with a Ponderosa hand her father thinks may be related to the man that shot him.
Speak No Evil
Apr 20, 1969 · 49 min
Coley Clayborn, who has always thought his mother abandoned him and his father, thinks she is only after the gold mine he inherited when she recently returned to Virginia City.
The Fence
Apr 27, 1969 · 49 min
While Ben and Hoss visit an old friend to negotiate the purchase of a mine, former Confederate soldiers arrive wanting to exact revenge on the Cartwrights' friend for starving POWs
A Ride in the Sun
May 11, 1969 · 49 min
A pair of con artists swindle Ben out of nearly $30,000 after convincing the Cartwright patriarch to enter into a deal to buy his cattle. The brother and sister shoot Ben, rob the