I actually joined in June of 2001 as "mtntrail1" and was around member #300. However, at the time, the site was new, with not much data, so I pretty much ignored the site for about 10 months. When I tried to log on 10 months later, the site was huge; however, I forgot my password and had to create "mtntrail2". By that time member numbers were up to over 1400. I later dropped the "mtntrail2" and changed it to my real name.
Even in April 2002, the site was somewhat in turmoil. When the site first went up in March 2001, a lot of mountains were added quickly, especially all the popular ones. Most of the mountain pages added in the beginning were not as good a quality as what you see today. And.....a lot of folks added these mountains, then disappeared. Members began to realize the importance of this site and the mountain pages, and began to vote mountain pages accordingly. Several of us began to follow their lead and looked at these mountain pages more closely....especially the more noteworthy peaks such as the CA 14ers, CO 14ers, state high points, and noteworthy world peaks.
As a result, in the summer and fall of 2002, a lot of mountains came up for adoption because of low votes and lack of response by owners who had disappeared. It was not uncommon to have a CO 14er up for adoption on a weekly basis. Back then, you could not transfer a mountain at will. You had to wait for it to come up for adoption, then be the first to snag it. Some of us would grab mountain pages when they came up for adoption early in the morning, then find owners for them later. Before the summer of 2002, a lot of the CO 14ers and some of the popular Rockies peaks were in really bad shape. But by the spring of 2003, these pages had been moved to responsible owners (what you see today) and the pages were brought up to a high level of quality. The same goes for some of the west coast peaks. There were only a few east coast mountain pages, but nothing like you see today.
Another problem with the adoption process was a person called a "squatter." That was a person who would see a page up for adoption, adopt it, then do nothing with it (squat). Usually, the squatter was someone who knew nothing about the mountain, but only adopted it to get the points. There was some kid in New Zealand who squatted on several CO 14ers and it took forever to get them back. People don't seem to care much about squatters anymore.
Anyway, there's a lot more stuff out there on some of the history. Maybe some of you old timers can elaborate.