Founding Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickey Betts will have a stretch of U.S. Highway 41 named after him, pending approval from the Florida Department of Transportation.
The dedication is a fitting tribute to the Southern rock legend, who passed away in 2024 at the age of 80. Betts was born in Florida and resided in Sarasota County, right off the highway, for decades. He even referenced his deep ties to the region and the U.S. 41 itself in the lyrics of “Ramblin’ Man”, one of the ABB’s biggest hits, in the line, “I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus rollin’ down Highway 41.”
The Betts family’s Florida roots date all the way back to the 19th century, as Dickey explained in an interview with Sarasota Herald-Tribune‘s Wade Tatangelo: “Well, my family has been in Manatee County since like 1870, right after the Civil War. We homesteaded land in Myakka. All you had to do was put stakes down on the land and pay taxes on it and it was yours,” he said. “In fact, they named the road Betts after us out there.”…