  For more than 25 years the Tevatron was the highest energy accelerator in the
world, providing the first access to particle collisions beyond 1 TeV and
achieving an ultimate performance a factor of four hundred beyond the original
design goals. This article reviews the many formidable challenges that were
overcome, and the knowledge gained, in building, operating, and improving the
Tevatron over its lifetime. These challenges included: the first operations of
an accelerator based on superconducting magnets, production of antiprotons in
sufficient numbers to support a useable luminosity, management of beam-beam,
intrabeam, and other collective effects, novel manipulations of the beam
longitudinal phase space, and development and application of a wide variety of
innovative technologies. These achievements established the legacy of the
Tevatron as the progenitor of all subsequently constructed high energy hadron
colliders.
