Geologists map Cartwright Country

The Ponderosa gang. The “Big Bonanza” was part of the Comstock Lode, now newly mapped.Remember the burning Ponderosa map at the beginning of the long-running TV show “Bonanza”? It’s up in flames before you can read all the place names. Now a geologist at Washington University in St. Louis has replaced that map with one of the famous ore site known as the Comstock Lode, a part of which is the “Big Bonanza.” While it’s doubtful that Hoss, Adam and Little Joe – not to mention the sages, Pa and Hop Sing – could make heads nor tails of it, the map is a valuable contribution to geology because it gives an interpretation of the flow of hot waters interacting with rock some 14 million years ago that created the ore district.