How did the Old West dry goods stores get their supplies? Were there wagons full of flour, sugar, cloth, etc. that delivered their contents on a regular basis? Where did they come from?
For those towns not located on a railroad line or a major river, supplies would be brought in using supply wagons sent out from a larger town with warehousing capacity.
Not many would be located away from the railroad. Until the railroads came through there weren’t all that many people to sell any goods to either.
Barring the founding of a successful mine or other highly productive source. In that case, while the railroad may not be there yet, it soon will be. In the meantime, wagons ho!
Supply trains.(scroll down about 1/3)
Not railroad but horse-drawn wagons. Travelling peddlers would also supply goods to farms and homesteads that weren’t near a town.
Fort Bridger in South West Wyoming was one of the earliest emigrant way stations. it was establish specifically to serve the covered wagon trains going West.
While the lack of horses or beasts of burden limited the quantity of trade, most of the original Interstates follow ancient trade routes that were in use for more than 1,000 years.
It wasn’t long after the Lewis and Clark expedition that people like Jim Bridger, who founded Fort Bridger, started to head West in the fur trade.
Lewis and Clark’s book was published in around 1807 and the fur trade collapsed by the 1940’s. But the need for supplies to support that effort widened these old trails into wagon tracks which was convenient as the Oregon dispute with England ended in 1846 and Mexico ceded the South West to the United States in 1848.
By 1858 the Overland Mail Company actually had mail runs from San Francisco to Missouri. The popular stage coach routes had a swing station about every 10 miles and a home station about every 50 miles. So there was a need for supplies outside of the homesteaders and as mentioned above if there was mining that would create a large amount of trade too.
There were dozens of companies running stage lines and the support structure required for regular operations is probably more than one would imagine these days.
It was absolutely more established that popular media portrays by the end of the fur trade.