Note
WARNING: Mapping/GIS/file type manipulation geeking out below.
So the City of Vernon provides pre-processed 1m contours for the entire city, but I want a 2.5m interval on a couple of the maps because of some good hills. Vernon also offers a DEM download, which normally would not be an issue, but it is only offered as a ".dwg" and a ".shp". These are both vector files, but a DEM should be a raster file.
Turns out the .shp file is points 25m apart from each other of vertical elevations, with a secondary file of breaklines connecting the nodes. Incredibly useless. The .dwg is a similar thing, but in a proprietary format that should not be used in any GIS applications as far as I am concerned.
At this point - looking like I'm gonna just be using a 2m contour interval and adjusting the prebuilt contours a bunch.