No one ever thought of looking at century old photos?
Actually, we have 61 year old film of Ft. Lauderdale Beach of an AERIAL SHOT from the opening credits of "From Where The Boys Are" which was released in 1960. As you can see, the ocean back then was just as far from State Road A1A as it is today.
You would need day and time to adjust for the tides, which I expect the logs to have.
As long as the photographers wrote down the day and date and the precise time of day the pic was taken that might be a great idea. Get back to me on that.