 "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" was one of the first Hollywood productions to be shot on location outside the United States (in the state of Durango with street scenes in Tampico, Mexico), although many scenes were filmed back in the studio and elsewhere in the U.S.In 1990, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".In 1925, in the Mexican oil-town of Tampico, Fred C. Dobbs and Bob Curtin, two unemployed American drifters, survive by bumming for spare change.