Before engines ever roared on Maricopa’s western edge, the land at State Route 238 and Ralston Road was rows of cotton. 

Long before APEX Motor Club opened its private racetrack in 2019, the property was part of the Storie family farm, operated for decades by William “Steve” Storie, a lifelong Pinal County resident who grew up in Florence and farmed in Maricopa until he retired in 1994. 

The acreage, stretching across what’s now the 280-acre APEX campus, was typical of Maricopa’s mid-century agricultural landscape — flat, irrigated and lined with cotton, hay and grain fields serviced by the Santa Rosa Canal. The Storie operation stood among a patchwork of family farms that once defined the desert corridor between Maricopa and Mobile. 

Storie, remembered by family as a skilled mechanic, outdoorsman and devoted father, moved to Casa Grande as development pressures and market shifts began reshaping the region’s farms. His former fields remained open through the 2000s, annexed by the city in 2007 and later selected for the luxury motorsports club. 

Today, Ferraris and Formula cars replace tractors once turned furrows. This 2017 photo, provided by the Maricopa Historical Society, shows where the Storie farm stood along SR 238.