Rural communities are a tough one, Andy. From experience, you have more options in urban areas -- due to conflicts for the officer's time/attention, scheduling issues, and other higher priority things going on in town besides traffic violations. (Take it from someone who is still on "warrant status" for speeding in Nebraska years ago

).
If your driving record is pretty clean for the most part, and you don't have anything else financially pressing for your time, showing up may be worth it. In addition to the fines of course, there's the high likelihood of increased insurance premiums for 3 years. You might get it talked down.
Some states/counties have regulations you can look up where you have the right to request a court reporter and various other officials at your hearing. The advantage of doing that is to sometimes use the system against itself -- to create so many coordination complications between people/resources that they cannot reasonably re-schedule your hearing within the maximum allowed before they have to toss out your ticket (e.g., 90 days).
But again, the pitfall of rural tickets is that seems to almost never happen.
Whatever you choose, good luck, Andy.