By STEVE FRIESS BATTLE MOUNTAIN, Nevada - Hundreds of revelers crammed into this small town’s community center on a recent Saturday night to celebrate the marriage of Bianca Hernandez and Jose Lomeli.

Groups of people danced to Spanish folk music. Beer, wine and laughter were abundant, and tables were piled with gifts.“It’s not just the wedding,”said a friend of the newlyweds, Jesse Dias, 34. “Times are good around here. People are happy.”

Good times? Happy people? Hasn’t word of the economic anxiety and resultant austerity made it to this remote highdesert capital of Lander County, 345 kilometers east of Reno?

Yes, it has, but the economic meltdown in much of the United States has been a boon to the county and its 5,000 residents, 4,000 of whom live in the Battle Mountain area. The reason: They mine gold in Lander County, a mineral-rich area that is a major reason Nevada is the world’s fourth biggest producer of gold.

And when the broader economy declines and the value of the dollar fluctuates, people buy gold. At current prices? gold has been just below $900 an ounce lately, and not that far off its record high of more than $1,000 an ounce in March? places like Battle Mountain hum with good-paying jobs and rising home values, making the financial woes of the rest of America a distant concern.

“I don’t know of anybody who is getting foreclosed on; it’s just not something that’s an issue out here,”Charlotte Thompson, 56, said, shrugging as she seated diners at the Owl Club Casino and Restaurant .

Unemployment in Lander County was 4.8 percent in November, while the statewide rate of 8 percent was the state’s highest since 1984. Two goldless counties bordering Lander, Nye and Pershing, had unemployment rates in November of 10.5 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

Even with annual salaries for average mining jobs starting at more than $60,000, the two largest mining companies in the area, Barrick and Newmont, cannot find enough qualified workers .

Robert Perry, a shift supervisor at Barrick’s Pipeline Mine, a 12-year-old facility near Battle Mountain that yields about a million ounces of gold a year and is expected to continue to produce until 2014, said the mine was always hiring people.

“Our housing market, I would say, is better than most, just because there are jobs around here,”Mr.Perry said.“My house I bought five years ago for $134,000, and right now it’s worth about $300,000.”

Kimberlie Davis, owner of Sage Homes, a company here that builds about 25 homes a year in Lander and neighboring counties, said:“ I don’t want the national economy to be awful by any stretch. I like a happy medium. There is a point when everything’s even, when it’s good here and good everywhere else, too, but it’s very short lived.

“More than likely, gold’s going to devalue and the cycle will start all over again.”