NBC executives considered canceling Bonanza before its premiere because of its high production cost, but the network kept it because it was one of the first series filmed and broadcast in color, which helped RCA (NBC's corporate parent) promote sales of its color television sets.

The opening scene for the first season was shot at Lake Hemet in the San Jacinto Mountains, California, before production moved to Bourne's meadow near Round Hill, Nevada, on the east side of Lake Tahoe.

The first Virginia City set was located on a Paramount backlot and was also used in Have Gun – Will Travel, Mannix and The Brady Bunch; it was destroyed in the 1970 season-12 premiere episode 'The Night Virginia City Died', allowing production to move to the cheaper Warner studios.

The script for 'The Night Virginia City Died' was originally written for departing actor David Canary's character Candy, but was rewritten for Sheriff Roy Coffee and Deputy Clem Foster, two characters who rarely appeared together on the show.

Starting in the third season, the Cartwrights and most recurring characters wore the same costumes in nearly every episode, which made it easier to use stunt doubles and allowed the reuse of stock riding footage between scenes to cut costs.

Dan Blocker began wearing a toupee in 1968 as he approached age 40, joining co-stars Lorne Greene and Pernell Roberts who had worn hairpieces from the start; Michael Landon was the only original cast member who never wore a wig, while Victor Sen Yung wore an attached rattail-queue.

At the end of the pilot episode, three cast members (all except Pernell Roberts, who untethered the horses instead) sang the original Bonanza theme lyrics by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans unaccompanied, but this singing sequence was cut before broadcast for being too campy, replaced with the Cartwrights whooping and howling.

According to a 1972 account, Bonanza was watched by roughly 400 million people in 82 countries; Ethiopian television broadcast it without dubbing or subtitles because the station could not afford them, yet it remained popular even among non-English speakers.

In the 1993 TV movie sequel, producer David Dortort told Dirk Blocker (Dan Blocker's real-life son, who closely resembled and sounded like his father) that he was too old to play Hoss's son, so he was instead cast as an unrelated newspaper reporter, even though promotional clips misleadingly suggested he was playing Hoss's heir.

The 2001 prequel series The Ponderosa contains an anachronism: it is set in Nevada Territory in 1849, even though Nevada Territory did not actually split from Utah Territory until 1861.