How long has it been since these communities actually did that? Small towns can't really support the diversity of industry it takes to buy more local goods than shipped-in goods in a modern-day lifestyle.
The newspaper was produced for the town. Everything else was either services that can't be mass produced or the town was doing their own mass production for export.
A town in the Great Plains doesn't have a climate fit to make most foods locally, unless you call taking shipped-in ingredients and cooking them "making" food.
No. Not in eastern Montana. There are regions where you can't live off the land year-round like you think.