Sep. 13--The recession has pushed Nevada's casino gambling sector off the cliff, but the state's gold mining industry is still enjoying a wild ride that started when the price of gold hit bottom at $251 an ounce in August 1999.

Since then the price of gold has passed $1,000 an ounce -- three times. The first time was in March 2008, and it reached that milestone for the third time on Friday.

The spot price of gold closed at $1,004.90 an ounce Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold for December delivery closed at $1,006.40, the highest close on record and the first above $1,000 since February. It reached $1,013.70 earlier in the day, the highest price for a most-active contract since March 17, 2008.

All of that is good news for rural mining towns in Northern Nevada, for the 14,000 direct employees of mines, for businesses that sell goods and equipment to mines and miners, and for gold investors.

Gold's price surge has even helped to offset the slump in state and local government revenue during the past year's recession.

Keith Schwer, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, however, says Northern Nevada's gold boom is providing only limited economic benefits to Southern Nevada and its tourism-based economy.

"They are not going to take these unemployed casino workers and make them into miners," Schwer said.

It's not like a contractor who fixes air conditioners in the summer and then switches to heater repairs in the winter, Schwer said. In addition, most mining companies are headquartered in other states.

Mining companies also cannot always boost operations quickly enough to benefit from higher gold prices, partly because of delays in obtaining permits, said John Dobra, associate professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Reno, and director of the Natural Resource Industry Institute.

As proof of that he points to Barrick Gold Corp.'s new Cortez Hill underground and open pit mining operations southwest of Elko. About 350 workers are employed there now and expect to start gold production early next year.

"They discovered the gold at Cortez Hill 11 years ago," Dobra said.

Newmont Mining Corp., another gold mining giant, operates eight mines in Northern Nevada, including Gold Quarry, Leeville, Midas and Deep Post.

It employees 3,500 workers in the state.

But state and local governments do benefit from the mining industry, Dobra said.

Gold mining accounts for a large portion of the net proceeds tax on mining, a tax on operating profits in Nevada.

The total net proceeds tax has more than doubled since 2004 when Nevada counted $40 million in net proceeds from mining. In 2007, the total reached $75.7 million and last year it hit $91.9 million.