The Wild West adventures of Ben Cartwright and his sons as they run and defend their Nevada ranch while helping the surrounding community.
Charlie Trent used to be an Army scout. Now he's the town drunk. Hoss helps him regain his self-esteem when he has him volunteer to lead a gold-bearing troop through the desert where there's very little water
After a U.S. deputy marshal saves Adam's life by gunning down two men who shot at him, he eventually reveals that he's in town to bring a close friend of the Cartwrights to Sacramento to testify in a statewide racketeering trial
Tom Edwards has been a paraplegic ever since an accident involving Ben Cartwright. His ranch is going to waste. Ben decides to help the Edwards couple by making Tom a business proposition: the Cartwrights will build a grain mill on Edwards' land
Jacob Darien is leading his family of Quakers through Virginia City. After he is accosted by town roughnecks, Adam escorts the wagon train across the Ponderosa, unaware that his new friend is planning a robbery
Ranchers are being killed, cattle stolen, and even after former Deputy Marshal Denver McKee sends posses after the suspects, they are never found. Meanwhile, he suspiciously has plenty of money to take care of his daughter and her schooling
Prejudice erupts on both sides when Ben gives an Indian named Matsou and his wife some of his land, after saving Ben's life from a renegade Indian who almost killed him on the Ponderosa.
Ben hires a drifter named Sam Jackson. He doesn't know Jackson is really outlaw Johnny Logan, who signed on to the drive because he plans to kill the sheriff of a nearby town, who is also his father.
Adam rides up on some Indians wanting to harm a white woman they believed was a mountain spirit. He kills them but not before they wound him. The woman nurses him back to health but the rest of the tribe is still out there looking for her.
Angry with the way a beautiful deaf-mute girl is treated by her father, Little Joe takes it upon himself to teach her sign language so they can communicate better. His plan backfires when the young woman falls in love with him
Hoss falls prey to the wiles of a beautiful woman with a gambling addiction and refuses to believe she's only interested in his money in spite of Adam's proof to the contrary.
After Joe kills a man in self-defense who tried to set fire to the Ponderosa to clear himself some land, he has to take his lively, feisty, wild daughter home, and she and her relatives are now determined to kill Joe
Dolly Kincaid is so fed up with her controlling, sheriff father, she runs away with her boyfriend. She later finds out he is the leader of some murderous bank robbers