A unique installation along the greenway of Crabtree Creek Trail by artist group A Gang of Three drives home the dangers of flooding
by Ayn-Monique Klahre | photography by Keith Issacs

You might have noticed it on a jog or bike ride along the Crabtree Creek Trail: a series of squares in primary colors that resemble maritime flags. But if you slow down, they start to reveal letters, then familiar names, like Agnes, Matthew and Floyd. Each of these storms or hurricanes caused major flooding in this area near the intersections of Glenwood Avenue and Ridge Road, just south of Crabtree Valley Mall.

Called Alluvial Decoder, the installation is by A Gang of Three, a group of artists that includes William Dodge, Lincoln Hancock and a rotating cast of collaborators; for this project it included Will Belcher, a Philadelphia-based landscape architect. Completed in 2023, it was created in response to a call from the City of Raleigh to create an educational display to teach passersby about the floodplain. “Lincoln and I were both very familiar with the site from growing up in Raleigh — we knew the sort of devastation that has come from flooding here,” says Dodge.

In addition to the mural, the installation includes striped poles that jut from a meadow along the embankment — each a marker of the heights this creek has reached in the past. “You don’t understand how enormous a condition it is until you stand next to one of them and realize, I would be underwater right now,” says Dodge. “It’s a sort of data visualization that makes it feel immediate, embodied,” adds Hancock. Now, when the creek floods, these markers are visible above the surface, a reminder of how much higher the water could be.

The team used their backgrounds in art, design and architecture to create this site-specific piece. “We leveraged light, wind, shadows and sightlines to create the maximum environmental impact,” says Hancock. In addition to greenway traffic, part of the installation can be seen from the road. “Nearly 60,000 cars drive by this site every day, so we wanted to create some breadcrumbs, some visual interest from the road, to engage those folks as well,” says Dodge.

The painting itself was done by Raleigh muralist Luke Buchanan. He and Dodge met at the funeral of a mutual friend, Jackson Griffin, who drowned in floodwaters after Hurricane Fran. “For us, it was more than a mural. Luke finished it on the 25th anniversary of Jackson’s death,” says Dodge. Hancock notes that the completion of the project also marked 50 years after that area was developed. “Now we know what problems are caused when the land is paved,” says Hancock.

In designing the poles, it became clear that the worst floods happened just after the area was developed, before Raleigh’s stormwater team worked on remediation efforts up- and downstream. But as A Gang of Three was getting ready to install the markers, another significant flood happened after a heavy rain, and they had to decide whether they were going to add another marker. “It was a reminder of just how often these things happen,” says Dodge. ”

This article originally appeared in the August 2025 issue of WALTER magazine.