Even the Romans used the Main and Rhine as transportation routes for building materials and timber. From the 13th century onwards, timber in particular was assembled into rafts and transported downstream. In order to raft the expensive oak and fir trunks, e.g. from the Black Forest, undamaged through the narrow Middle Rhine Valley, many workers were needed, and the profession of raftsman also flourished in and around Wiesbaden in the 18th century. The Rhine rafts commonly used in the region around Wiesbaden were usually 300 meters long and around 70 meters wide.

The importance of rafting declined steadily with the advent of steam navigation on the Rhine from around 1830. While both modes of transportation were initially used in parallel and at times steamboats pulled the rafts, the wooden vessels were gradually replaced by the new technology. The construction of fixed bridges across the Rhine also restricted the width of the rafts and they were no longer competitive from the middle of the 19th century.

The situation on the Main was somewhat different. The area at the mouth of the Main near Kostheim was one of the largest raft berths in Germany in the 19th century. Here, the smaller Main rafts (approx. 10 m wide and up to 130 m long), which were used to transport timber from the Franconian Forest down the Main to the Rhine, were tied up, processed further or reassembled as larger Rhine rafts for the onward journey. As the Main was not navigable for steamboats and other larger freighters until the 1880s due to its shallow depth, raft traffic was not initially restricted here. However, after the regulation of the Main and the construction of several locks from 1883 onwards, the water level of the river rose, allowing more and more large cargo ships to navigate, which made rafting more difficult. The state treaty of 1894 on the regulation of the Lower Main also decided to expand the Kostheim raft harbor, which was intended to reduce the number of raft berths in the open Main, as they were increasingly obstructing the cargo ships.

The economy in the communities on the Rhine and Main benefited from rafting. In Kostheim, for example, there were five sawmills around 1900, three of which had rafting rights. Numerous wood processing companies settled around the rafting port. The businessmen and craftsmen also took care of the diverse equipment, from raft hooks to anchors, and organized the catering for the crews.

Until the outbreak of the Second World War, rafts were still regularly used on the Main and Rhine, but they were not as large as in earlier times. A brief upswing after the war lasted only a few years. The transportation of timber was increasingly shifted to the roads, and timber lost its popularity as a raw material. In addition, cheaper tropical timber was competing with local timber. While 53 rafts left Kastel in 1950, there were only 14 in 1959 and just two in 1964. The last commercial raft passed through Biebrich in November 1968. In Kostheim, the raft harbor was filled in during the 1960s. Many wood processing companies had to close.

Instead, raft trips on the Rhine became an attraction. Despite, or perhaps because of, the gradual decline in the importance of their trade, the Rhine Rafting Guild has demonstrated its solidarity since 1862 by holding an annual service on Epiphany. In 1999, the Kastel Local History Society opened the raftsmen's room in the old Schönborn merchant's house next to the Reduit and the Kostheim Local History Museum also documents rafting. In April 2012, a rafting monument was unveiled on the banks of the Rhine in Kastel. The man-sized bronze rafting sculpture is a reminder of the almost 500-year history of rafting in and around Wiesbaden.