The discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012 was the culmination of a long and fascinating journey since the 1970s at four hadron colliders. Increasingly more sophisticated experiments that were operating at the evolving energy frontier, made crucial contributions to establishing the Standard Model of particle physics. In this talk, I recall some of the main initial steps and lessons learned at the CERN ISR, the CERN SPS ppbar, and the Tevatron at FNAL. The main emphasis will then turn to the CERN LHC, including an update with some very recent ATLAS results, particularly for the Higgs boson.