A Gloucester landmark is in the early stages of demolition. The old Burke’s Mill house, located on Route 602 just past James Store, will be torn down in the coming weeks.

Marcy Germanotta, spokesperson for the Girl Scouts of the Colonial Coast, the organization that owns the property, said the deteriorating structure has gotten to a point that even the Virginia Department of Historic Resources has deemed it unfit for repair.

The property was donated to the Girl Scouts in 1972 by the late Fred Mason, Germanotta said. It also includes a larger tract of land on the opposite side of Route 602, which is where a majority of the Girl Scout camp activities take place.

The mill house has remained non-operational since the scouts took it over, she said, but for a time, the organization did have caretakers for the camp property staying in the historic structure.

Don and Lavonne Joyce were those caretakers and lived in the old mill house for three decades, spanning from the early 1980s u...