John Romine, 39, lives near the Louisiana line but comes to the county seasonally with his brother to find work. “They got the money, and we got the tools,” he said. To get to the Hybar mill, he drives to a parking lot near the plant and boards a school bus that transports him to his pipe-fitting shift. Then he returns to his home, a camper in an RV park in Blytheville, another part of the county, about 17 miles away. Almost every lot in the RV park was occupied when NBC News visited him there, with license plates from Tennessee, Virginia, Missouri, Texas and Mississippi.

Lisa Willard, who runs the Mississippi County Union Mission, a homeless shelter, said the arrival of temporary and shift workers has made it harder for longtime residents to find affordable housing.

Though the steel mills have been charitable, Willard said, the county's dichotomy of affluence and poverty reminds her of visiting another country on vacation.

“On one side you see the beautiful resort; the other side you see the villages,” she said. “We have the wonderful steel mills. We have this other side, as well.”

Outside an Osceola soup kitchen, the lunch line moves briskly. Visitors take their food — in this case a lunch of Ro-Tel tomatoes and chiles mixed with spaghetti — to go. Lee Mosley, 48, an electrician, is one of them.

“By the time you pay your rent, it’s hard, because you ain’t got no money to pay the light bill or any other bill or go grocery shopping because you’re broke from the bills,” he said, standing outside, plate in hand.