Widely known in Palm Beach County as Southern Boulevard, State Road 80 is actually a stretch of 123.5 miles that links State Road A1A in Palm Beach to U.S. 41 in Fort Myers. It is the northernmost of three arteries that bridge the west coast of Florida to its east coast — the other two being Alligator Alley and Tamiami Trail.
On Tuesday, July 8, Palm Beach County commissioners approved renaming part of Southern Boulevard for President Donald Trump, a decision that came after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill approving the measure in June.
All seven Palm Beach County Commissioners voted to approve a proposal designating Southern Boulevard between Kirk Road and South Ocean Boulevard — where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate sits — as “President Donald J. Trump Boulevard.”
The next step to officially make the name change comes when the city of West Palm Beach and the town of Palm Beach both approve it.
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In Palm Beach County, Southern Boulevard serves as a commuter route between South Bay and Belle Glade at the western end, growing suburbs in Westlake, Loxahatchee, Wellington, Royal Palm Beach and the county seat, West Palm Beach. It is the main stretch of road President Trump’s motorcade takes from Palm Beach International Airport to Mar-A-Lago on the island.
The road designation won’t be the first time Palm Beach County has saluted the U.S. president:
Here are five other facts about Southern Boulevard:
1. Major landmarks dot Southern Boulevard in Palm Beach County
Traveling east on State Road 80, the first city you’ll pass through is Belle Glade and between that rural area and Loxahatchee, there are endless sugarcane fields.
The next landmark is Lion Country Safari, which marks the rural to urban transition of the road. The drive-through safari was recently ranked among the top 10 in USA Today’s 10Best Readers’ Choice safari parks in the nation.
The road then doubles from four to eight lanes in Royal Palm Beach and passes the South Florida Fairgrounds and Coral Sky Amphitheater, where the annual South Florida Fair takes place.
After passing Florida’s Turnpike, it gains two more lanes and becomes an expressway, with interchanges at Jog Road, Haverhill Road and Military Trail. East of Military Trail, it passes by the southern end of Palm Beach International Airport.
East of the Florida East Coast Railway bridge crossing, it reduces to two lanes as it crosses the Lake Worth Lagoon on two bridges and it ends near Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate.
2. The origins of Southern Boulevard go back 100 years
State Road 80 was built during stretches in the 1920s with the first vehicle going from Belle Glade to Palm Beach in 1923. in the 1920s. The first vehicle to travel the route from Belle Glade to Palm Beach was in 1923, according to historical documents.
The section from Twenty Mile Bend to West Palm Beach opened on July 4, 1924 and portions west of Lake Okeechobee were completed by 1926.
The route was actually first designated State Road 25 in 1923, running from Palm Beach to Punta Rassa but was renumbered State Road 80 in 1945. (The old system numbered routes in the order they were legislated and the new system used a grid).
3. Southern Boulevard underwent a major four-year expansion
The biggest expansion project in Palm Beach County came during a four-year period in the early 2000s for a 6.5-mile stretch.
The $78 million construction project was divided into three projects and began construction in January 2003 with completion in fall of 2007. The construction widened the roadway from four to six lanes, from west of Forest Hill Boulevard to west of Royal Palm Blvd., and to eight lanes, from west of Royal Palm Boulevard to west of Congress Avenue.
The project also included new interchanges at Jog Road, Haverill Road and Military Trail. New bridges were built over the C-51 Canal at Haverhill Rd., Military Trail and Kirk Road. The project also installed new street lighting, signalization and pavement marking, landscaping, irrigation and drainage.
4. Donald Trump isn’t the first president to use Southern Boulevard on visits to Palm Beach County
The Kennedy family came to Palm Beach as early as the 1920s and had owned a house at 1095 N. Ocean Boulevard.
And just as the crowds flock Southern Boulevard to see the motorcade of current President Donald Trump when he visits, so too did the crowds in the early 1960s gather on the Southern Boulevard bridge to wave to John F. Kennedy as he rode from the airport to the winter White House in a Lincoln convertible.
Kennedy made his final trip to Palm Beach on Friday, Nov. 15, 1963.
He had flown to Cape Canaveral on Saturday to tour the space center and watch the launch of a Polaris missile from a nuclear submarine. Back in Palm Beach on Sunday, he attended mass at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in West Palm Beach. Then it was back on Southern Boulevard to the airport and off to Dallas, where he was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963.
5. State Road 80 has a tragic history
The recent resolution also designates the stretch from Lion Country Safari Road to Royal Palm Beach Boulevard as “PBSO Motorman Highway,” in honor of three Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies who died after an SUV struck them on Nov. 21, 2024, on the side of Southern Boulevard as they waited for roadside assistance with a disabled PBSO motorcycle.
Ralph “Butch” Waller and Cpl. Luis Paez died at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach within hours of the crash. Ignacio “Dan” Diaz died there four days later. All three men were members of the sheriff’s motorcycle patrol team.
Aside from that tragedy, there have been numerous other fatalities that earned the road a dubious nickname of “Killer 80”, mainly because of high traffic volume, rural road conditions that have sharp curves with inadequate lighting, speeding and ongoing construction.
A segment of the road in the Glades area experienced 28 fatalities and serious injury crashes between 2016 and 2021, prompting installation of lighting for an 18-mile stretch.
James Coleman is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at jcoleman@pbpost.com and follow him on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @JimColeman11. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Five things to know about Southern Boulevard (a stretch soon to be Donald J. Trump Boulevard)
Reporting by James Coleman, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
