I think this quote from William Least-Heat Moon in Blue Highways about driving across the vast expanse of west Texas describes it best:

"The true west differs from the east in one great pervasive influential and awesome way - space. The vast openness changes the roads towns houses farms crops machinery politics economics and, naturally, ways of thinking. How could it do otherwise?  

Space west of the line is perceptible and often palpable, especially when it appears empty, and it's that apparent emptiness that makes matter look alone, exiled, and non connected. Those spaces diminish man and reduce his blindness to the immensity of the universe. They push him towards a greater reliance on himself, and at the same time, to a greater awareness of others and what they do.

But as the space diminishes man and his constructions in a material fashion it also, paradoxically, makes them more noticeable. Things show up out here. No one, not even the Sojourner escapes the expanses. You can't get away from them by rolling up the safety glass and speeding through because the terrible distances eat up speed. Even dawn takes nearly and hour to cross Texas. Still, drivers race along but when you get down to it, they are people uneasy about space."