RIDGECREST, Calif. — While the rest of California struggles, this high desert city is proof of the power of government spending. Uncle Sam has helped turn it into a modern-day boomtown.

A hospital, three hotels and a pizza restaurant are under construction on the main drag, where heavy equipment clears land once covered by sage and creosote bushes. Crooked “No Vacancy” signs are a familiar sight at local motels, whose parking lots are jammed most weeknights with contractors’ oversize pickup trucks. Job recruitment billboards greet drivers heading toward Ridgecrest.

Once known as Crumville, this parched community of 28,000 about 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles has become the land of opportunity. At least for those who don’t mind isolation, searing heat and little entertainment beyond Wednesday night karaoke at the local bar.

“We don’t have Disneyland, we don’t have an opera house,” Mayor Steven Morgan said. “But California is having economic troubles, and we have jobs.”

The source of those billboards — and the engine of Ridgecrest’s economy — is the U.S. Department of Defense. The Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, situated on the 1.1 million-acre testing range known to many here simply as China Lake, expects to add 1,000 civilian jobs by 2011, many of them good-paying engineering and computer-science posts.

About 4,300 civilians are employed on the base. The weapons division is spending $200 million on research centers, labs and other buildings where it will continue to develop armaments for the Navy and Marines.

In response, developers are building houses and hotels to accommodate base visitors, hiring contractors from across the West. The result is that Ridgecrest has been largely insulated from the state’s downward economic spiral. The city’s unemployment rate of 8.4 percent in June was well below the state’s 11.6 percent average and is much lower than the 14.7 percent rate in surrounding Kern County. Home values are holding up better than in many other areas.

There’s no question that Ridgecrest has felt some fallout from the larger economic downturn. A Mervyn’s closed when the department store chain went out of business, and a car dealership was lost when its owner moved it to Los Angeles. But despite a $250,000 decline in sales tax revenue, Ridgecrest will still end the fiscal year with a $1 million cushion. That relative security has made Ridgecrest an oasis of jobs.

Building contractors have long had a tough time coaxing laborers to commute to the desert for work, said Mark Crisci, executive vice president of K Partners Hospitality Group, which completed a 93-room SpringHill Suites in Ridgecrest last year and is building a Hampton Inn, too. But with the industry hammered by the housing bust, hard hats are now grudgingly making the drive.

Laborers fill the town’s motels during the week. The Motel 6 is nicknamed the construction frat house. Twentysomethings who wouldn’t have given Ridgecrest a second glance in better times are finding it preferable to the unemployment line.

Settling in Ridgecrest is a matter of perspective, said Billy D. Williams, a 30-year-old computer scientist who moved from Lompoc, Calif., last year. He can walk into the local sports bar, Tommy T’s, and know everybody, he said. He’s involved in a pool league in town, and he officiates at town baseball and football games.

It’s a far cry from New York, where he lived for years, he said, but he’s willing to make sacrifices. “You have to take this place for what it’s worth. If you compare the rest of the world to New York, you’ll be disappointed.”