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Tales From the MoJo Road –
By Glynn Wilson –
COULTERVILLE, Calif. – The Old West is full of great stories, famous the world over. Some are based on a bit of truth; others seem made up out of whole cloth.
The Shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone in the Arizona Territory on October 26, 1881 comes to mind.
I don’t know if the Old Johnny Haigh Saloon in the Gold Rush town of Coulterville, California ever saw such a scene, since I’ve not completed my research yet. But Friday nights there could be a bit lively, I’m told, back in the day when John Muir was hanging out planning to lure President Teddy Roosevelt to Yosemite.
Over the past few days, I’ve been revisting an old favorite Western show on Amazon Prime Video, “Bonanza,” set near Virginia City, Nevada bordering Lake Tahoe.
Bonanza is an American Western television series that ran on NBC from September 12, 1959, to January 16, 1973, according to the Wikipedia page. It lasted 14 seasons with 431 episodes, and was NBC’s longest-running Western, the second-longest-running Western series on American network television (behind CBS’s Gunsmoke), and one of the longest-running, live-action American series and one of the first to run in color.
The show continues to air in syndication. It is set in the 1860s and centers on the wealthy Cartwright family, initially starred Lorne Greene as Ben Cartwright, Pernell Roberts as his son Adam, Dan Blocker as Hoss and Michael Landon as Little Joe. The show was known for presenting pressing moral dilemmas, and like many TV shows in the ’60s, the main characters were “good guys” who treated Native Americans and Black folks well, while corrupt and racist redneck cowboys were depicted as “bad guys,” who usually died in gun fights or were banished from communities for being assholes.
The title “Bonanza” is a term used by miners for a large vein or deposit of silver ore, from Spanish bonanza (rich ore body) and commonly refers to the 1859 revelation of the Comstock Lode of rich silver ore mines under the town of Virginia City. The show’s theme song, also titled “Bonanza,” became a hit song.
In 2002, Bonanza was ranked No. 43 on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, and in 2013 TV Guide included it in its list of The 60 Greatest Dramas of All Time. The time period for the television series is roughly between 1861 (Season 1) and 1867 (Season 13) during and shortly after the American Civil War, coinciding with the period Nevada Territory became a U.S. state.
The show plays an important role in my own life and story.
Read the full story in the New American Journal.
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