This data set consists of satellite based study of East Greenland in particular 260 km-long section of coastline between 66.3 and 68.4◦N, used to explore glacier change from 1985 to 2019. Imagery were downloaded from the USGS website EarthExplorer (U.S. Geological Survey USGS, 1995). We sought images with minimal cloud-cover that were gathered in July/August, when we expect surface snow cover to be at a minimum. We sourced imagery from Landsat-5 for the years 1985 and 1995, from Landsat-7 for the year 2005, and from Landsat-8 for the years 2015 and 2019 (all Landsat imagery courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey). For each year for which we had data, composite images were generated. The data set consist of shape files of fronts of glaciers in 5-year intervals. Data set used in: Unravelling the long-term, locally-heterogenous response of Greenland glaciers observed in archival photography Michael A. Cooper, Paulina Lewińska, William A. P. Smith, Edwin R. Hancock, Julian A. Dowdeswell, and David M. Rippin, 2021