"Distant" is perhaps not the same as "inaccessible". McCormick reapers were made in Chicago, Studebaker wagons in South Bend, IN, and Remington, Winchester and Colt firearms made in the Northeast. All these companies were distant from Topeka, but still quite able to get their products to their Western customers via railroad.

Though a blacksmith would be able to set up shop in Denver CO , circa 1880, and keep busy repairing farm equipment and perhaps making the occasional door bolt and iron fence, he could not hope to compete with a large factory in the East for producing things like hinges and latches and door locks.

But some of this can also depend on the date. When the Hawkens were making their rifles in St Louis in the 1820's, it would have been thought to be the West.