[1] He was the son of Sarah "Sallie" (née Urquhart) and John Goode Jr., a Virginia lawyer, politician and Solicitor General of the United States under President Grover Cleveland.

[2] His mother was the daughter of a wealthy planter, Dr. Richard Alexander Urquhart of Strawberry Plains plantation in Isle of Wight County, Virginia.

[1][9] In 1879, Goode received an appointment from the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to be a topographer with the newly created United States Geological Survey (USGS).

[1][9] He was assigned to conduct geographic surveys in Arizona and Utah, resulting in what are now called the USGS Topographic Maps.

[1][11][12] In May and June 1888, Goode and Urquhart did the triangulation for Rhode Island, for a collaborative mapping project between the state and the USGS.

[1] In August 1894, Goode was placed in charge of the more important Pacific Section, including California, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Washington and Alaska.

[16] In 1900, Goode presented a lecture, "The Topographic Work of the United States Geological Survey," at the California Academy of Sciences.

[21] Several geographical features were named in his honor: On January 2, 1889, Goode married Sophie Jackson Parks (born November 20, 1860) of Norfolk, Virginia, in Saint Paul's Episcopal Church.

[2][25] In 1894, the couple hired architect Victor Mindeleff to design a three-story stone and brick Colonial Revival style house in the Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Lanier Heights.

The following topographic maps were issued by the United States Geological Survey and were documented in WorldCat and the Internet Archive.