The World’s Longest Racetrack Will Be for Wealthy Racers

Almost everything outside the window of John Morris’s helicopter is his or will be his soon. When the semiretired internet entrepreneur bought the original Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in 2004, here in the desert town of Pahrump, Nev., it was a 2.2-mile racetrack with a couple of spectator tents and porta-potties. The gate to the place wasn’t much more than a swiveling lead pipe.

“I thought it’d be fun to own a racetrack,” says Morris, 69, angling his red, black, and white Robinson R44 helicopter toward a large parcel of desert scrub that he says he’ll soon lease from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Last year, Morris paid an undisclosed sum for a 150-acre chunk on the track’s west side; once he has the bureau’s piece, the Spring Mountain Motor Resort & Country Club—his ever-growing automobile playland—will total 900 acres, with the world’s longest track as its centerpiece.