Brad A. Bays

Brad's training is in the historical geography of agricultural settlement and U.S. federal Indian policy, especially as it operated in what became Oklahoma during the allotment era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He has examined the political geography of tax-exempt status retailing in Indian country and the interactions of tribal governments and state governments. Since arriving at OSU, Brad has worked with geographic education initiatives and he has often contracted with the state to identify and record Oklahoma's architecturally and historically significant buildings.

Research Interests:
Brad's research uses a landscape and historical GIS approach to examine Oklahoma's agricultural evolution. A native of the waning eastern margin of the Winter Wheat Belt, he documents twentieth century agricultural change at the local scale from a time of peak rural population density, when animal-powered general farming was the rule, across a century of mechanization and regional specialization, and ultimately agro-industrialization and the retirement of marginal lands. He is interested in gauging the local scale and short term decisions that drive agricultural intensification and in turn affect patterns of regional specialization.