He returned to Washington, D.C., then Connecticut, and established a consultant business while also teaching occasional courses at the New York Medical College. From 1856 to 1859, he investigated from the ancient turquois mines of New Mexico to the mineral resources of North Carolina. He established and edited the "Mining Magazine" (1858–1860). Learning of the creation of a state geological survey for California, he lobbied for the position and hurried to California, only to lose to fellow Yale graduate Josiah Whitney, which began a lifelong enmity between the two geologists. He established a consulting business in San Francisco, travelled to the California gold fields and newly discovered Comstock, and, in 1861, traveled to Japan with another early Arizona geologist, Raphael Pumpelly, to introduce western technology to the shogunate. In 1863, after a side trip to Alaska, Blake returned from Japan to California, took consulting trips including into the new mineral fields of Arizona, and helped organize the first school of mines in the Far West. At what would become University of California, Berkeley, he was appointed professor of mineralogy in the College of California and geologist to the California State Board of Agriculture. The response was less than overwhelming. Clark Spence in his "Mining Engineers of the American West" quotes state geologist Whitney's not unexpected critical assessment of Blake's school (p. 44): "W. P. B. is now lecturing at Oakland to the College boys & they call that a Mining School! This is the era of Mining Schools in the U. S.! Heaven save the mark!" Blake's first effort at a mining school ended when the College of California was absorbed by the University of California system.