In the past, the Kinzig was very important for timber rafting. The earliest mention of this trade on the Kinzig dates to the year 1339. The rafting towns of Wolfach and Schiltach had their own rafting corporations, which organized timber rafting to the Rhine and on to Holland; these corporations were the so-called Schifferschaften ("boatmen's associations"). They were given the sole rights of timber export by their respective overlords and ran a lucrative business that helped the towns' prosperity. Sebastian Münster writes in his Cosmographia universalis: "The people living by the River Kyntzig, especially around Wolfach, earn a living from the great quantity of construction timber, which the float down the waters of the Kyntzig to Strasburg and into the Rhine, and earn a great deal of money every year." Rafting on the Kinzig reached its peak in the 15th and 16th centuries and then again in the 18th century, when the demand for wood began to rise rapidly, as the Netherlands and England began to build their mighty naval and merchant fleets. The rafters could not match the capabilities of the newly introduced railways, however, and the last commercial timber raft ran down the Kinzig in 1896. Today, timber rafting festivals, museums in Gengenbach, Wolfach and Schiltach, as well as numerous technical facilities, such as weirs recall the timber rafting era.