I was recently at a beach on the Pacific with a rocky shoreline and
noticed that the rocks did not seem to be covered with a salt
deposit. Thinking back, I could not recall seeing a salt deposit at
any beach I had ever been to. Why is it that the evaporating sea water
does not leave a visible salt layer on the rocks and sand?

You don't usually see big salt deposits formed by the evaporation of
seawater because it only takes a small amount of water to redissolve
them.  Rain, fog drip, waves, etc. all act to remove previously
precipitated salt deposits.  Even high humidity is enough to dissolve
sea salts -- at relative humidities above about 75%, NaCl (common
table salt, which is the most abundant salt in seawater) will
"deliquesce", or draw water from the air to form a solution ot salt
and brine.)

That having been said, small salt encrustations on coastal rocks and
soils are, in fact, fairly common in dry weather.  All it takes is a
warm dry period accompanying or following a period of unusually high
tides or high surf.  I know people who actually go out and
painstakingly gather "natural sea salt" from such deposits along the
Sonoma and Mendocino coasts of California in the summer.

Thanks for the comment, hfshaw - that's what I figured the answer was,
but I couldn't find any references talking about it. Searching for
deliquesce (good word!), however, did pull up some info.