In south Florida, Bishop Gray found five self-supporting parishes, 40 organized missions and 11 mission stations. Among other churches established during his episcopate was a mission to the Seminoles in Immokalee (in 1898). In 1913, Bishop Edwin Garner Weed of Florida realized that the missionary Southern diocese had grown much more rapidly than the original diocese, due to the expansion of railroad service to Tampa and Key West, and suggested returning Marion and Volusia Counties to the original diocese, but that suggestion failed when only one of the thirteen parishes in the missionary district agreed.