Teleworking in a parking lot. School on a flash drive. The coronavirus prompts new urgency for rural Internet access.

“We’re trying to send people to Mars, but we can’t get our own population connected to the network?” said Gregory Goergen, who has sometimes gone with his children to a Sheetz parking lot to get work done online. Every day, he said, he and his wife consider packing up and leaving Powhatan — but they worry that without high-speed Internet access, they won’t be able to sell the house.

By Meagan Flynn