John J. Tracy built the J.J. Tracy Building as a drug store in 1906. Already a pharmacist at age twenty-two, Tracy migrated west and spent three months in Kelton, Utah, where he met William T. Riley, an entrepreneur and early partner of John Hailey. After arriving in the Wood River area in the late 1880s, Tracy and Riley opened Bellevue's first drug store. As mining activity accelerated, they moved to Hailey and put up a tent-roofed building on Main Street. Soon after establishing the business, Tracy organized and held Hailey's first dance. Riley retired a few years later, and the fire of 1889 destroyed everything, with Tracy able to save only a clock and a canary, according to the Hailey Times. After another prosperous period, Tracy built this building in 1906 and operated his drug store there, becoming the longest continuous serving merchant in the Wood River Valley until his death in 1932. His family continued running the drug store for several more years before selling it to Otto Broyles, whose family operated a pharmacy there until 1980. The building has also housed a thrift store supporting the Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley.