As with other rural areas around Richmond, the poverty in Goochland County is easy to miss.

Multimillion-dollar estates lie next to shacks with no indoor plumbing. And one of the state's most technologically advanced school systems serves a population in which nearly a quarter of the students qualify for free or reduced lunches.

It may seem surprising that more than 1,000 residents live below the poverty line in a county where the average home-sale price is almost $540,000 -- more than double the area's average of about $260,000 -- and the median household income is the second-highest in the region.

Still, some other counties in the region have higher poverty rates than Goochland's, which is about 7 percent. Cumberland County's rate, for example, is almost twice as high at nearly 14 percent, and Sussex County has a rate of almost 18 percent -- which comes close to the urban poverty rates in Richmond and Petersburg.

But unlike poverty in cities, the destitution on the edges of the region's suburbs tends to be isolated, scattered and to some people, difficult to grasp. Organizations that serve needy residents must contend with obstacles such as isolation and lack of public transportation.

In rural areas, aid workers and volunteers don't have housing projects or blighted neighborhoods as beacons for needs. Social workers in Goochland find a person living in a barn here, someone living out of a car in another part of the county and a disabled person who can't get out of her trailer tucked away in a wooded area elsewhere.

"When I gave a talk recently, someone asked me, 'Are there really people in Goochland who go hungry?'" said Sally Graham, executive director of Goochland Fellowship & Family Services.

Regional transportation systems serve some rural counties, such as Louisa and New Kent. But in Sussex, social workers encourage clients to partner with each other to arrange for transportation for medical and other appointments, said Chequila Fields, director of the county's Social Services Department.

"Out here, people have to depend on others in the community to get to services," Fields said.

Candice Henderson, who lives in the Cartersville area of Cumberland, said the lack of transportation alone can lead to poverty in rural areas with few job opportunities. Henderson, 26, has two children. She uses a transportation program in Cumberland's Department of Social Services to get to and from her day-care job in Richmond, she said.

"If they didn't have this program, a lot of us wouldn't have anything," said Henderson, who doesn't have a driver's license. "We'd just be on public assistance. This program helps us get off it."

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Glen Sink, executive director of the Richmond-based Center for Rural Virginia, said the state compares well with others in overall economic well-being. But a closer look reveals a state with two economies, Sink said.

High technology and the military provide plenty of well-paying jobs along an urban crescent from Northern Virginia, through Richmond and Hampton Roads. However, in the rest of the state, agriculture, textiles, mining and other industries related to natural resources have scaled back, consolidated or pulled out altogether with little to replace them.

The sparseness of the populations makes it difficult for rural areas to build infrastructure for business and the health-care institutions to serve residents. And many are resistant to driving long distances to get it, Sink said.

"That distance becomes either prohibitive, or it's outside a rural resident's knowledge and comfort to go that far," Sink said. "They just sit back and deteriorate, and the community loses a real asset."

Some rural and semi-rural counties are taking steps to better assist needy residents, such as consolidating services and opening health clinics.

New Kent County is planning to merge its health department, social services, transit and other programs in one building, said Michelle Lauter, New Kent's social services director. That will mean less travel for clients, she said.

In Goochland, two nonprofit organizations announced a merger this fall that will mean clients no longer have to register with one agency for a doctor's appointment, and another to get a ride to get there. The merger of Goochland Fellowship & Family Services and The Free Clinic of Goochland took effect in October. The new organization serves the health-care needs of the uninsured, as the Free Clinic did, and supplies the transportation, home rehabilitation, literacy and life training skills that Family Services provided.

Louisa recently was awarded a $600,000 federal grant for a community health-care center scheduled to open next month. The center will take regular health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. For those with no insurance, fees will be assessed based on financial need, said Paul Oswell, director of the county's Department of Social Services.

The center will cut down on the time and expense required for trips to the nearest hospitals in Charlottesville or Richmond. Similar clinics are open in King William and Charles City counties. Caroline County also has applied for such a grant, said Rod Manifold, executive director of Central Virginia Health Services, which operates the community health centers in central Virginia.

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Goochland resident David Johnson, 89, worked all his life cutting and hauling pulp wood until age incapacitated him about a decade ago. He lived without indoor plumbing for 40 years until this year, when he became the county's first beneficiary of the federally funded Indoor Plumbing Rehabilitation Loan Program. Johnson lives in the part of the county considered wealthy, east of Goochland off River Road West.

Johnson suffers from age-related dementia. His outhouse hadn't functioned for years, and hauling water from a local spring and from family taps for his needs became too taxing on him and his relatives, said his nephew, Lawrence Harris.

"That outhouse hadn't been operating for a long time, and you could smell that place when you passed it from the road," Harris said. Because the wiring in the house was deemed unsafe, the program demolished Johnson's old house and rebuilt a 576-square-foot cottage with plumbing and proper electricity.

Aid workers in rural counties often rely on churches and public safety responders to find out where the need is.

In New Kent, Lauter said she believes her social services workers have a handle on where the needs are. But, as with other localities, churches and public safety workers are trained to recognize isolated individuals who need help.

"The churches report to us. The police, fire department and EMS, if they go on calls, they report to us," Lauter said.

The Powhatan County Department of Social Services works closely with the Powhatan-Goochland Community Action Agency and the Powhatan Coalition of Churches. Those agencies try to help out where federal and state regulations don't allow social services to assist, said Lee Burgin, the department's executive director.

No single cause explains poverty in the rural areas. The merged Goochland Free Clinic and Family Services helps people who have had a run of misfortune such as job loss, the loss of health insurance or a fire that burns down the family's house. Other clients are stuck in what officials call generational poverty, a circumstance handed down through many generations of a family.

"It's almost like they'll never get out of it," Graham said. "I try to encourage the single moms. To me, education will get them out of their condition."

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Goochland resident Valerie Tyler's ability to earn a living all but ended because of a health condition. Tyler, 53, taught sixth grade for 24 years, including about a decade in Spotsylvania County. She was trying to change careers to become a corrections officer two years ago when she suffered congestive heart failure that incapacitated half her heart.

The mother of a grown son and two grandchildren, she suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes, anemia, asthma and depression. Her reduced heart capacity makes her winded about halfway through most days. She lost her health insurance, can't work enough to get more and doesn't qualify for Medicaid. She uses services provided at the Free Clinic -- including prescriptions for 14 medications daily, she said.

She's amazed that she's still walking around, she said.

"I tell people, if it weren't for [The Free Clinic], I'd be 6 feet under," she said inside the Family Services building in Goochland, where she sometimes volunteers.

She sells cosmetics to make a modest living and helps Family Services with home repairs when she's able. "On the good days, I try to do something for somebody else, because it keeps me alive," she said. Contact Calvin R. Trice at (540) 932-3674 or ctrice@timesdispatch.com.

Staff writer Jamie C. Ruff contributed to this report.