Reno is not far from one of the few lithium deposits in the country, it is relatively close to Fremont, Calif., where the vehicles will be assembled, and its industrial park has tens of thousands of acres of land for the auto company’s new expansive factory. Tesla officials did not respond to requests for comment.

“There are solid reasons to be optimistic about Reno,” said Greg Bird, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. “We’re starting to really see the data turn for them.”

Reno competes for new businesses with Salt Lake City and major cities in Arizona, all of which are convenient for online retailers to set up shipping locations for customers in California and the rest of the West. In Tucson, Duralar Technologies, a global nanotechnology company, announced in March that it planned to set up its United States headquarters there.

Boise has increased its marketing to lure new technology companies and has drawn several start-ups in recent years, said Clark Krause, executive director of the Boise Valley Economic Partnership. The organization emphasizes its outdoor lifestyle on its website.

It is not a simple climb back from the depths of the recession for these cities. Nearly all are constrained by a shortage of skilled workers to fill the jobs created by companies their economic development offices are trying to attract.

“We have the same challenges everyone else does when it comes to finding enough talent to grow as much as we could,” Mr. Krause said.

In Reno, where many workers traditionally have been employed in some aspect of the gambling industry, the work force is less educated than in more populous cities, economists said. Tesla, for instance, might have to recruit from elsewhere to find enough trained workers for its battery plant, should it decide to build here.