In 1826, construction of the Farmington Canal, part of the New Haven to Northampton Canal, blocked the course of Munnisunk Brook, then a tributary of the Farmington River. The brook’s flow was carried 20 feet below the canal through a culvert about 90 feet long. After the canal was abandoned in 1848, the culvert eventually ceased functioning, and the backed-up waters of Munnisunk Brook formed the first version of Lake Basile behind the canal fill. The Canal Greenway now follows the canal route, and the railroad that replaced it in 1850, along the lake’s southwest corner. Before modern refrigeration, Lake Basile served as a local ice pond where townspeople harvested large blocks of ice in winter, stored them in large ice houses for year-round use, and ice men delivered blocks to residents once or twice a week during summer for food refrigeration in ice boxes. In the 1930s, the lake was dredged to deepen it and create a permanent centerpiece for what became a small community of cottages, many of them summer cabins, some of which still exist.