He started travelling, eventually reaching Mexico in 1919, where he found work in the oil industry, conducting map and geological survey of the states of Veracruz, Tabasco, and Chiapas.

He met American archaeologist and Mesoamerican scholar Sylvanus G. Morley who was conducting fieldwork in Mexico and Central America.

Morley brought Blom to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he received a formal education in archeology for two semesters during 1922–23.

The Bloms turned the house into a cultural and scientific center with rooms for visitors, with Gertrude continuing the enterprise for decades after Frans’ death.

Blom died in 1963, at age 70 at San Cristóbal de Las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico.