He ended his long and distinguished career as head of the school of mines at the University of Arizona, 1895–1905, remaining in an active emeritus status until his death.

William Phipps Blake was born in New York City, entered Yale in 1846 under the guidance of Benjamin Silliman, Sr., and graduated in 1852, one of seven to get the newly created Ph.B.

Silliman later drew Blake away to help collect specimens for a mineral exhibit in New York, a path he would take many times over the ensuing decades.

Benjamin Silliman's descriptions of the collection in an 1854 article in the Mining Magazine reveals Blake's travels from the gold belt in the southern Appalachians to up-state New York and New England.

More importantly to geologists, Blake saw the erosive power of wind-blown sand in the pass and contributed to the significant scientific debates about mountain building.

Biographer David B. Dill, Jr. calls the exploration of the pass one of Blake's "crowning events" in a "long professional career rich in scientific and human values.

He returned to Washington, D.C., then Connecticut, and established a consultant business while also teaching occasional courses at the New York Medical College.

Returning to New York and Connecticut, he was a founding member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers (1871) and contributed to its conferences and "Transactions" throughout his career.

Selected by the Smithsonian, during 1872–1876, he collected and installed the government exhibit on the mineral resources of the United States for the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.

[7] While busy with these exhibitions and scientific corps duties, during the 1860s to 1880s, he was also a much sought-after expert witness, testifying in court over the geology of mineral deposits.

Blake's extensive collection of diaries now at the Arizona Historical Society archives chronicle the work performed in the interest of mining corporations.

He and two of his sons oversaw the digging of a quarry for dam fill, the construction of roads, a sawmill, an office, and quarters for workers.

Unfortunately, the territorial legislature reduced the funds for his position, and he declined the move but did send books from his collection to start the school's library.

His students began their careers just at the time of rapid expansion in exploiting Arizona's world class copper deposits.

In 1863 they lost William Phipps Blake, Jr., age 6, in San Francisco, but raised four sons, Francis, Joseph, Danforth and T. Whitney, and daughter Constantia to adulthood.

On May 22, 1910, William Phipps Blake died of exposure and resultant pneumonia in Berkeley, California, four days after, and as a consequence of, receiving an honorary LL.D.