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DeSantis signs bill and renames State Route 80 President Donald J. Trump Highway

State Route 80 — Palm Beach Boulevard in Lee County— is now the President Donald J. Trump Highway. The name change came Tuesday as part of Florida legislation signed by the governor,.
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Special to WGCU
State Route 80 — Palm Beach Boulevard in Lee County— is now the President Donald J. Trump Highway. The name change came Tuesday as part of Florida legislation signed by the governor,.

Gov. Ron DeSantis went on a renaming spree Tuesday.

The spree came as he signed into law a transportation measure.

Main renaming effort was in dedicating the capital city airport as “Bobby Bowden-Tallahassee International Airport.”

But that wasn't all the bill came with.

The bill — 628 — dedicates 124 miles of State Road 80, which stretches from Palm Beach County to Lee County, as “President Donald J. Trump Highway.”

State Road 295 between Duncan 8 Road and Gulf Beach Highway in Escambia County also becomes “Warrior Sacrifice Way.”

The Escambia County dedication honors three servicemembers killed in a terrorist attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2019 --- Mohammed Sameh Haitham, Joshua Kaleb Watson and Cameron Scott Walters.

Another road designation, for a portion of U.S. 41, between North Creek and Blackburn Point Road in Sarasota County, is “Dickey Betts Memorial Highway.”

Forrest Richard "Dickey" Betts, was a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band and is credited with writing the group’s biggest hit “Ramblin’ Man.”

Betts died in April 2024 in Osprey. He was 80.

The measure also names part of College Avenue in Tallahassee, from the historic Westcott Building in the center of the FSU campus east to South Monroe Street, as “President John Thrasher Memorial Boulevard.”

Thrasher, who died last May after a battle with cancer, served in the state House and the Senate before being tapped in 2014 as president of FSU. He earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from the university. He was 81 when he died.

The airport naming is the second this year for the Legislature.

DeSantis on March 30 signed a separate piece of legislation (HB 919) to begin the process to rename Palm Beach International Airport as “President Donald J. Trump International Airport.”

Another bill that has yet to be delivered to DeSantis (HB 33) designates part of S.W. 107th Avenue in Miami-Dade County after slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk and Commercial Boulevard within Lauderdale-by-the-Sea as “President Donald J. Trump Boulevard.”

Renaming a Florida highway for Trump isn't the first time it was tried, but the first time it was successful.

Anthony Sabatini, now an attorney who serves as a Lake County Commissioner for District 1 and previously served as a member of the Florida House of Representatives, announced in 2021 that he’d offer an amendment to the annual transportation facility designations bill renaming U.S. 27 in Florida as the President Donald J. Trump Highway.

The measure failed to gain support.

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