I was able to create a gridded dataset from 2-ft contour data with some simple routines in GlobalMapper. Here is the first cut...note that it does contain some weird artifacts related to the irregular extent of the data. Now, we are working on carrying out the steps in ArcGIS. Having no success exporting the grid from GlobalMapper which is one of the only problems I have encountered with that otherwise excellent program. I suspect that I have to read the manual more thoroughly.